[Commlist] Call for Abstracts (Regulation and Accountability in a Hybrid Media System)

Call for Abstracts

Regulation and Accountability in a Hybrid Media System: Content 
Creators, Algorithmic Plurality and Online Platforms


Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic February 10 – 11, 2025

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The advancement of technology has significantly transformed the dynamics 
of media’s democratic functions and reshaped the relationship between 
news organizations and their audiences. It raised issues about the 
impacts of an increasing abundance of information, such as audience 
fragmentation, heightened polarization, partisan exposure, etc. 
Understanding these changes and their implications for democracy is 
crucial in navigating the intricacies of the contemporary information 
era influenced by the rapid arrival of generative AI.

Social media is one of the key distribution platforms, and this fact is 
changing the entire media landscape. The significant role of social 
media has implications for media pluralism, democracy and regulation. It 
is essential to strengthen the legislative framework for social media to 
be able to manage the content they distribute. This conference aims to 
explore the complexities of regulating these platforms and analyze the 
challenges andopportunities, focusing on algorithmization, legislation 
and legislature, andthepreservation of democratic principles in the 
digital environment.

This conference, organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles 
University inPrague on February 10 and 11, 2025, invites submissions 
that contribute to the expansion of current research from different 
perspectives to include topics from various disciplines such as media 
studies and communication, journalism studies, political science, law 
and legislation, sociology, computer science and technology, strategic 
communication, social media andaudience studies. Even though the main 
focus is European, we welcome broader perspective, particularly from the 
global south. The conference will include three online panels that will 
allow theparticipation of selected scholars who cannot attend in person.

About the broad topic of the conference, here are other themes, 
including but not limited to:

●The role of technology in transforming the media markets and the impact 
of the changing media’s democratic functions in the hybrid media system

●The changes in the media market shares and market sizes of old and new 
media brands in the European context

●The evolution of the main types of the applied business model in media, 
in particular, news organizations, to compensate for the losses in 
subscriptions and advertising and ensure the necessary capital to 
preserve the quality of the journalism

●The effect of the broader diversity of news products and how it has 
impacted the interest of the citizens in public issues

●The issue of how professional journalists, alternative media content 
producers, and media managers balance the required commercial and 
financial aims with goals of journalistic freedom and media freedom in a 
democratic society

●The risks of a dominant position of social media platforms and search 
engines in the advertising sector

●The analysis of legal frameworks for media pluralism, including a 
comprehensive examination of regulations on media ownership, content 
dissemination and access to information

●Proposals for fact-checking in the fight against disinformation, 
including the use of technology

●Regulating social media as crucial platforms for media production and 
consumption

●Use of generative AI in journalism and media business

Thislistis not exclusive, and we call for papers which, in a broad 
sense, deal with the political economy of traditional media and 
alternative media, including both theoretical and analytical 
perspectives on the challenges, perceptions, risks, impacts, 
opportunities and regulatory framework involved, concentrating on the 
advanced technology, communication creators, alternative media content 
creators, itself or its audiences.

The conference is financed by the ReMeD 
<https://resilientmedia.eu/> project HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01-06; 
therefore, no conference fee will be charged). For this conference, 
ReMeD thematically collaborates with another Horizon Europe project 
MeDeMAP <https://www.medemap.eu/>.

We invite abstracts between 300-500 words (excluding 
references) submitted in English by 30 September 2024 via email to Dr. 
Suchibrata Roy, PhD ((remed.conference /at/ fsv.cuni.cz) 
<mailto:(remed.conference /at/ fsv.cuni.cz)>). The submission must be 
anonymized as follows.

The abstracts for both individual papers and panel proposals can be 
submitted. Each abstract must be attached as an anonymized file to the 
email(all authors' names and affiliations will be in the email's 
body). Each panel proposal must include an abstract of the cover topic 
and the titles of 5 involved papers (names and affiliations of the 
proposed panel chair and all the authors of the involved papers will be 
in the email's body). A maximum of 3 papers from the same institution in 
one panel is allowed (and each paper in a panel has to be presented by a 
different presenter). Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is 
for an individual paper or a panel proposal and if it is for an onsite 
or online presentation.

Abstracts will go through a double-blind peer review process, and the 
authors will be notified about acceptance by 31 October 2024.

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