CMSTW'2022: Comparative Media Studies in Today's World - 2022 School of Journalism and Mass Communivations, St.Petersburg State University St.Petersburg, Russia, April 19-20, 2022 |
Conference website | http://cmstw2022.org |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cmstw2022 |
Abstract registration deadline | February 18, 2022 |
Submission deadline | February 18, 2022 |
10th Jubilee Annual Conference
COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES IN TODAY’S WORLD
(CMSTW’2022)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Time: April 19–20, 2022
Place: St. Petersburg, Russia – VIRTUAL
Working language: English
Theme for 2022:
Mediated Solidarities and Inequalities
The third decade of the 21st century has started dramatically for the mankind – the pandemic, growing world tensions, the rising fears of the new global military catastrophe, a continuous Syrian ‘proxy war’, digital threats, and environmental points of no return dominate the agendas, create new divisions, and shape emergency decision-making around the world. Communication has been key to all these processes – from the infodemic to international environmental forums to spinning in public diplomacy to online storms, global and local audiences have been witnessing the growing capacities and dangers of today’s communicative environments. And not the abundance of information was the biggest hazard, but the fractures in coherent public discussion, absence of collaboration and agreement, and (re)production of existing and new social and political inequalities that prevent mindful deliberation.
Inevitably, the growth of complexity and tension in communication of all levels affects the quality of deliberation and social choice, locally, nationally, and internationally. We, though, believe that this impact may have positive sides, too. In online realms where patterns of public discussion lead to cumulative opinion formation, the roles and motives of deliberative individuals make scholars reassess the human grounds of public opinion, including personality, emotion, and fear, thus coming back from ‘re-feudalizing’ institutions to persons. Tiny acts of political participation (Margetts et al., 2015) rethought as tiny communication actions (Habermas 1990) make each like matter for opinion aggregation. However, the new normativity that includes user communication into deliberative practices needs to develop the deontology for how to separate legitimate dissent from counter-productive and unbearable hatred – and how to grow solidarity despite the complexity of human differences.
Such a position calls for equal reassessing of the social roles of media, especially in polarized and fragmented societies of today. Beside the well-known social, political, and digital divides, we have been witnessing another gap, namely rationality vs. mythological and conspiracist mind, rapidly opening up and cutting across families, friendships, and us ourselves. Inequalities are also supported, rather than beaten, by online platforms and their affordances, creating hidden communities with latent boundaries. However, it is these platforms that also give home to previously impossible transnational online diaspora and ad hoc media that are content and space in one. In this environment, media of more traditional stance orient to audiences with distinct value sets. Even if this allows for audience formation and pursuing public goals that each editorial board considers right, this also deepens the cleavages in societies. Today, media decide whether they advocate for their version of what is right or create bridges between contested truths, and the second option is no less important than the first one.
Media, just as scholars and citizens, encounter one Habermassian-and-not-only question: How do we preserve and find new grounds of solidarity? Do we need the bridges between communities of varying logics, interests, origins, and experiences? And who is responsible for building them? Who still has capacities to overcome the social cleavages?
The 10th Jubilee conference ‘Comparative Media Studies in Today’s World’ (CMSTW’2022) focuses on mediated solidarities and inequalities across contexts and cultures. With it, the conference contributes to setting the research agendas for the next decade which promises even bigger growth of complexity and disruptiveness in social communication. At the same time, it features the scholars, research groups, universities, projects, journals, and sponsors that have made this conference a meeting point for the leading world scholarship in 2013 to 2021. In 2022, a range of new formats and features are introduced, and we welcome submissions from both ex-participants and new colleagues. The four traditional tracks of the conference will re-conceptualize the ‘platform society’ (Theory), question the pluses and highlight the minuses of ‘architectured’ communication (Political & Social), put journalism and media into comparative platform perspective (Media Industry & Journalism), and develop approaches to detection of communicative structures (Methods).
CONFERENCE TRACKS
In 2021, we will keep our four traditional tracks featuring various aspects of the questions posed above. The submissions might orient to but are not limited to the following sub-topics:
THEORY:
Chair: Silvio Waisbord, USA
- Solidarity and division as grounds for efficient opinion formation
- Theory of deliberation vs. communication theory: Crossing roads
- 'Frozen hegemonies' or 'liquid polarization'? Reassembling dialogue in online milieus
- Patterns and effects in mediated public opinion
- Personality and communication
- Digital media inequalities as a concept
- Groups and their languages in public debates
- Irrationality of communication as a human right and a new challenge
- Online/offline vs. public/private: Levels of privacy and strategies of openness
POLITICAL & SOCIAL:
Chairs: Svetlana Bodrunova (Russia), Anna Litvinenko (Germany)
- Discourses of war and peace in today's public communication
- Communication and nation states: A revival of the big chessboard?
- COVID-19 inequalities and divisions: The new people's choice
- Political communities and their media
- Cumulative dissent and unity in condemnation: Mediated manifestations of negative solidarity
- Inequality mediated: Empowerment or acknolwdgement of weakness?
- Hopes and fears: Emotions in public affairs communication
- Ethnicity vs. inequality vs. communication
- Risk societies and risk journalism
- Does political journalism still matter? Direct user communication with politics and new roles of media
- Public memory and media wars: Unequal representations of past
MEDIA INDUSTRY AND JOURNALISM:
Chair: Katrin Voltmer (UK)
- An inequality dimension: Access to media and media technologies
- Platform affordances and their patterns of privileging
- Rethinking journalistic roles for social media
- Irrationality vs. audience building: The dumbing-down debate revisited?
- 'Back to people': The rise of advocacy journalism as a response to failure of objective reporting
- Regional perspectives on journalistic standards
- Media consumption as a factor of social stratification
- Creative industries and urban environments as unequal spaces of communication
- The rise of the local: Localities and their media
- Journalism and social trust: The consequences of the pandemic
- Algorithmic gatekeeping and selective exposure to news
METHODS:
Chair: Olessia Koltsova (Russia)
- Detecting communities and their borders
- Measuring inequality in online and offline communication: From concepts to metrics
- Destroyal of the utopia: Qualitative research on Internet and its histories
- Media ethnographies and how they capture diversity
- New concepts for digital journalism(s)
- Platforms as contexts - and platforms vs. contexts
- The researcher's self and personal biases in research designs in communication science
- Humanizing the machine: Studies of alhorithms and media intermediaries
! When submitting to the conference, please start your title with naming the track, e.g. ‘THEORY A new definition of contextual knowledge for media studies’.
GUESTS AND FORMATS
Confirmed conference guests include Silvio Waisbord (USA), Ingrid Volkmer (Australia), Susanne Fengler (Germany), Katrin Voltmer (UK), Anna Gladkova (Russia) and many more. Keynote speakers will be announced by January 10, 2022; the conference, as always, will have at least four keynote speeches.
The conference will also have special invited talks panels with 3 to 4 invited speeches and/or presentations on selected topics within the conference theme. These will include:
- Digital media inequalities
- Mediating solidarity
- Cumulative deliberation and tiny acts of communication
- Transnational publics
- Digital journalism and new roles of media
We will also have events, panels and round tables organized by supporting organizations and research collaborations (tbc), including but not limited to:
- UNESCO/World Policy Forum
- ICA Regional Hub Russia
- IAMCR Digital Divide Working Group
- IAMCR Communication in Post- and Neo-Authoritarian Societies Working Group
- German Week in St.Petersburg
- Global Risk Journalism Hub
At special panels, we will feature:
- the special issues in Social Media + Society, Future Internet, and other publications that came out or are being prepared as the result of the previous conferences
- the constant supporters of our conference, such as Digital Journalism, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Germany), Center for German and European Research (Germany – Russia), and others
- the partnering conferences, like ‘Internet Science’, ‘Networks in the Global World’, ‘Moscow Readings’, and ICA post-conferences
And, traditionally, we will have a plenary podium discussion, a new books panel, a how-to-publish session for young scholars, and virtual social events not to miss.
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Since 2013, CMSTW has been gathering experts in a wide range of topics within comparative media research, from media systems studies and transformations in communication to the rise of platform-based communication to emotions and rationality in mediated discussions.
From its start, CMSTW has been part of a larger Academic Forum ‘Media in the Modern World’ which, in 2021, celebrated its 60th year of continuous existence. In 2022, the Forum will have the hybrid format and will take place on April 20 to 22. Thus, the CMSTW participants will also have free access to its virtual part.
In 2020 and 2021, CMSTW was conducted in the virtual format, which will have to continue for 2022, due to the remaining risks and closed borders in the vaccines-divided world. CMSTW’2020 and CMSTW’2021 had great success, with over 300 speakers and listeners from up to 20 countries each, and we hope for an even bigger success for the jubilee year.
To substitute our usual cultural program, virtual tours to museums and sites of St.Petersburg and get-together events will be organized.
FORMS OF PARTICIPATION
Individual submissions
Abstracts: up to 300 words, anonymized
Extended abstracts: up to 800 words, anonymized
Group submissions
Panel submissions: a 300-word panel rationale plus 3 to 6 abstracts of max 150 words, free form (pdf), deanonymized.
Workshops: special panels dedicated to discussing future publications, up to 10 participants. A 300-word workshop rationale, free form (pdf), deanonymized.
All submissions must be uploaded via the conference EasyChair account (will be available starting from January 1, 2022, or earlier; please look up the address on the conference website, follow our Facebook community, or write us a letter to the email stated below).
PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITIES AND AWARDS
Digital Journalism publishing opportunity
The conference steering committee will identify (based on the reviews) the best conference paper on issues that relate to digital media and online journalism. This paper will be suggested for publication in Digital Journalism (SCOPUS Q1), a distinguished journal in communication studies. Svetlana Bodrunova, the CMSTW program chair and Digital Journalism board member, will advise on how to make the paper fit the standards of the journal before submitting it to the journal peer review.
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Prize for the best paper in the social&political track
Since 2010, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung has been a partner of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St.Petersburg State University. In 2020, Stiftung established a symbolic prize for the best paper in the social&political track.
Prize for the best PhD student paper(s): Turned into a crowdsourced initiative!
In 2018, CMSTW Steering committee member Katrin Voltmer (UK) established a prize for the best PhD student’s paper of the conference; since 2021, this prize is equal to 5,000 RUR.
After a series of consultations, we have turned this prize into a crowdsourced initiative. Please consider adding 5 or 10 euro (paid online together with your conference fee in equivalent sums in RUR) to your conference fee. This money will be used to provide prizes for young scholars and/or compensate for their conference participation, and, as soon as the travel will re-open, used for small-scale travel grants.
More publishing opportunities to come soon!
DEADLINES AND OTHER DATES
February 25, 2022 – main submission deadline (papers, abstracts, and panels, including papers that belong to panels) – early submission is strongly encouraged, but the deadline may be extended
March 15, 2022 – notifications of acceptance
March 25, 2022 – deadline to confirm participation
April 19-20, 2022 – conferencing days
March 22, 2022 – early-bird registration deadline
April 1, 2022 – regular registration deadline
Please note that there will be no on-site registration payment procedures; please ensure your participation by paying the participation fee before April 1, 2022.
PARTICIPATION FEES
Due to COVID-19 and the virtual state of the conference, the fees have been significantly reduced:
Presenter: early-bird – 20 euro, regular – 30 euro (5 or 10 euro may be added for the crowdsourcing purposes)
PhD/Master student: 10 euro
Group submission: early-bird – 70 euro, regular – 80 euro
The payments will be exchanged automatically to the Russian rouble; thus, slight corrections of the prices might be the case.
Please note that some virtual events may have additional pricing for online environments – information will be provided on the conference website and on our Facebook community, as well as via emailing.
ORGANIZERS AND CONTACTS
Program steering committee Local organizing committee
Nico Carpentier (Belgium – Sweden) Svetlana Bodrunova – program chair
Boguslawa Dobek-Ostrowska (Poland) Anna Smoliarova – reviews chair
Kaarle Nordenstreng (Finland)
Florian Toepfl (Germany)
Katrin Voltmer (UK)
CONFERENCE WEBSITE AND EMAIL
The conference website will be cmstw2022.org (opens December 20, 2022). Those interested in learning of previous conferences and general information may wish to visit cmstw2021.org.
In case of any queries, please send us your questions to cmstw2020@spbu.ru – please note that, for all the virtual conferences, we use the active email of 2020 where correspondence is still vibrant.
We’re looking forward to welcoming you in St. Petersburg (online)!