[Commlist] CFP: Harmful visuals: Cases, practices and ethics

ECC 26 Preconference

HARMFUL VISUALS: CASES, PRACTICES, AND ETHICS

7 September 2026, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

Submission DL 31 March 2026

Visual media increasingly shape how harm is produced, circulated, and 
contested across intimate and public domains. From non-consensual image 
sharing and online hate to the journalistic circulation of war and 
atrocities, images raise urgent ethical, political, and regulatory 
questions. These challenges are intensified by uneven governance across 
platforms, shifting regimes of visibility, and the growing prevalence of 
manipulated and AI-generated imagery. This preconference invites 
critical engagement with harmful visual practices, cultures, and 
infrastructures in times of social and technological change. We welcome 
contributions examining visual ethics, regulation, pedagogies, and 
witnessing across diverse visual and multimodal formats.

Find more information here: 
https://visualculturesecrea.wordpress.com/harmful-visuals-precon-2026/

+++

HARMFUL VISUALS: CASES, PRACTICES, AND ETHICS

ECC 26 Preconference
Monday, 7 September 2026
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Bäckerstraße 13, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Submission Deadline 31 March 2026

CALL FOR PAPERS
Visual harm in both public and personal domains has been subject to much 
debate in recent years. Practices such as sexting, revenge porn, and 
online hate have become relatively common in our personal spaces, while 
broadcast and news media continue to report on war, atrocities, and 
genocides with visuals that may inflict harm in public contexts. Harmful 
visuals are distributed in old and new ways, but platforms are not 
subject to the same regulation as broadcasting media, and it is highly 
complex to account for their role in disseminating images that may cause 
harm. Moreover, the complicated relationship of visual media and (claims 
to) reality becomes even more complex through altered and AI-generated 
images. We therefore ask what roles harmful visual media, practices, and 
cultures play in times of shifting grounds.

Today, perhaps more than ever, images shape and intensify public 
narratives of division and escalation. Images, visual cultures, and 
regimes of visibility are being exploited to erode trust, sow 
polarisation, and undermine democratic discourse. Against this backdrop, 
investigating visual practices of harm, as well as visual ethics and 
literacies become ever more important in learning how to deal with 
harmful images today.

This preconference therefore welcomes submissions that engage with a 
wide array of images, videos, photographs, and other visual, multimodal, 
or audiovisual formats such as GIFs, emojis, memes, cartoons, and 
avatars. This may include papers that address, but are not limited to, 
the following themes:

    Editorial, journalistic, and research practices for handling 
harmful images
    Rules, regulations, governance, and policy concerning content 
moderation, banning, blocking, and account suspension
    Pedagogical approaches to teaching and educating with and about 
harmful images and practices
    Non-consensual sharing of intimate images and other forms of 
gendered visual violence
    Misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and conspiracism on visual social media
    Visual distortion and manipulation: AI, deepfakes, propaganda, and 
visual disinformation
    Witnessing, sousveillance, and the circulation of war imagery


SUBMISSION FORMATS
We accept different formats of presentation for this conference 
including traditional papers, fishbowls, or roundtables. Please note 
that this pre-conference is in-person only and no accommodations will be 
made for online participation.

Paper presentation: Traditional papers are set to 10-15 minutes per 
presentation.

Roundtable/pre-constituted panel of lightning talks: For this format, we 
ask 3-5 submitters to include brief introductions to their research or 
perspectives on the suggested topic along with a longer discussion and 
Q&A afterwards. Roundtables are meant to be curated research-based 
thematic sessions.

Fishbowl: For fishbowls, we invite teams of 4-8 people to suggest a 
topic related to “Harmful Visuals” and discuss it in an interactive open 
format with extensive inclusion of the participants. Compared to 
roundtables, for fishbowls we expect a more open dynamic and 
predominantly interactive format on a wider societal topic with a brief 
intro to the existing debate that develops based on the participants’ 
questions, comments, and concerns.

SUBMISSION PROCESS
Submissions can be made via this Google Form: 
https://forms.gle/fEs9NupiJ8KnZKar9

For traditional papers: please submit an abstract of 300-500 words 
(excl. references if applicable).

For roundtables: please submit a roundtable rationale of 300 words 
(excl. references if applicable), plus a collection of 3-5 short 
abstracts (200-300 words each) of the individual presenters’ roundtable 
contributions (titles, themes, and/or cases) as part of a single submission.

For fishbowls: please submit a description of the fishbowl theme, 
rationale, format, and potential discussion points and prompts of 
300-500 words in total (excl. references if applicable), along with a 
named facilitator.

Note: the inclusion of in-text references and/or a reference list is 
optional and will not affect the evaluation of the submissions.

All submissions will be evaluated as part of a single-blind peer review 
process. Evaluation criteria include: thematic fit with the 
pre-conference topic “Harmful Visuals”; focus on visual aspects, visual 
data, image- or video-based practices or methods; overall academic 
quality; societal relevance in light of current socio-political, 
-cultural, or -legal developments.

SUBMISSION TIMELINE
Submission deadline: Tuesday, 31 March at 23.59 CET (Rome, Berlin, 
Vienna time). Results will be communicated beginning of May.
Program will be communicated in June.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
The preconference is scheduled for the day before the ECREA main 
conference starts, and is set to take place in Vienna. Vienna is a 
1,5-hour train ride from Brno and is as such accessible for both 
participants travelling to ECREA through Vienna and commutable from Brno.

The conference is planned as a full-day event from 9.00 to 17.00.

Please note that this pre-conference is in-person only and no 
accommodations will be made for online participation.

Conference Location: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Bäckerstraße 13, 1010 
Vienna, Austria

The Academy of Sciences is located in central Vienna, which is easy to 
reach from the Vienna main railway station and Vienna airport (15 
minutes train ride from the centre).
The building and seminar room are accessible, should you have further 
requirements regarding accessibility please get in touch with us: 
(viscult-conference /at/ jyu.fi)
Please note that event registration is free-of-charge. Catering will be 
provided as part of the event.

PRECONFERENCE ORGANISERS
For questions, please email the pre-conference organisers at 
(viscult-conference /at/ jyu.fi)

The preconference is organised by the ECREA Section Visual Cultures and 
hosted by the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies 
in Vienna.

ECREA Section Visual Cultures:
Maria Schreiber, University of Salzburg/Klagenfurt, Austria, Chair
Patricia Prieto-Blanco, Lancaster University, United Kingdom, Chair
Suay Melisa Özkula, University of Salzburg, Austria, Vice-Chair
Joanna Kędra, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, Vice-Chair
Grace Omondi, Kristiania University College, Norway, YECREA Representative

Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies (CMC) at the 
Austrian Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the University of 
Klagenfurt, Austria:
Tobias Eberwein, Deputy Director and Research Group Leader
Charlotte Spencer-Smith, Senior Scientist

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------