[Commlist] CFP ECREA TWG Media Literacies and Communication Competencies: Young Scholar Symposium: Beyond the Bans

CFP Young Scholar Symposium: Beyond the Bans – Policies and Pedagogies 
in the Post-Digital Era of Restrictions

Organized by the ECREA TWG Media Literacies and Communication 
Competencies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria | One-day event | 
15 September 2026

ECREA TWG Media Literacies and Communication Competencies (MLCC) and the 
Department of Media Education and Digital Literacy at the University of 
Innsbruck have the pleasure to invite doctoral students and junior 
scholars to a joint symposium on media literacy.

Background

Across Europe and beyond, debates are intensifying around age 
restrictions on social media for children and young people. Proposals to 
raise minimum age limits or strengthen age verification are often 
justified by concerns about online safety, mental health, distraction, 
exposure to harmful content, and the commercial pressures built into 
platform design. In various European countries, legal approaches to 
banning social media are being developed, while the European Commission 
(2026) recently published its plans to develop enforce age limits for 
social media. Moreover, schools are increasingly introducing 
restrictions or outright bans on learners’ use of mobile phones during 
the school day (Campbell et al., 2024; Grigic Magnusson, 2023). The 
policies of restriction are often justified by concerns related to 
distraction, wellbeing, academic performance, and the influence of 
digital media on young people’s social and cognitive development. 
Digital detox or sufficient use of digital tools is defined as a key 
factor, but their effects vary (see e.g. Radtke, 2022).

At the same time, social media and smart devices play an important role 
in young people’s communication, identity formation, civic 
participation, and access to information. Smartphones, as everyday 
companions, are also a digital tool for all school subjects, but 
especially for media education. As a result, age restrictions on social 
media and bans of smartphones raise complex questions about how to 
balance protection and participation, how responsibility should be 
shared among families, schools, policymakers, and platforms, and what 
such measures mean for young people’s rights, agency, and inclusion in 
digital society.

The doctoral symposium Beyond the Bans invites doctoral researchers to 
explore how post-digital educational systems (see e.g. Jopling, 2023) 
respond to restrictions and bans and how pedagogical practices evolve in 
their aftermath. The workshop seeks to foster dialogue on the broader 
implications of these policies and to examine how different European 
contexts approach the regulation of digital devices and platforms in 
schools.

The symposium will take place as a one-day workshop at the University of 
Innsbruck in Austria and is designed as a collaborative forum where 
doctoral researchers can present and discuss emerging research. 
Contributions may be authored by doctoral researchers alone or 
co-authored with senior researchers or supervisors. The event aims to 
support early-stage scholarship and encourage comparative perspectives 
across countries and educational systems.

Topics of interest

We welcome contributions addressing questions such as:

Policy perspectives

* How have bans of digital infrastructure – e.g. mobile phones, social 
media – form school emerged and been implemented in different European 
contexts?
* How do national or regional education policies frame the role of 
digital infrastructures in schools?
* How do bans differ across European regions and what role do 
supranational policies and guidelines (e.g. from EU, UNESCO) or 
international research on existing bans (e.g. Australia) play in this?
* What rationales and policy discourses underpin these restrictions?
* What differences and similarities emerge in cross-country comparisons?
* What are the blind spots in public and academic discourse, for example 
regarding the normalisation of technocapitalist developments?

Pedagogical perspectives

* How do teachers and schools adapt their pedagogical practices in 
response to mobile phone and/or social media bans?
* What alternative pedagogical strategies emerge in classrooms where 
mobile devices are restricted?
* How do schools balance digital literacy goals with device restrictions?
* What educational implications arise from existing bans on social 
media, and what didactic and educational implications can be derived 
from them for European educational contexts?
* What kinds of post-ban pedagogies are being developed to support 
fosterin critical media education and digital literacies?
* How do bans affect media and information literacy (MIL) and digital 
competence education?
* How can we deal with blind spots in post-ban pedagogies as well as in 
corresponding public debates, political reasoning/policy debates and in 
academic research?

We particularly welcome comparative and cross-national contributions 
that examine differences between European regions or explore the 
relationship between policy frameworks and classroom practices. We will 
be able to host 20 participants at the maximum. Participants will be 
selected on the basis of relevance and scientific quality, while also 
aiming to ensure a balanced composition in terms of thematic focus, 
methodological approach, and gender representation among presenters.

Format

The doctoral symposium will consist of short paper presentations 
followed by structured discussion sessions. The workshop is intended as 
a supportive space for developing research ideas, sharing empirical 
findings, and building networks among doctoral researchers working on 
digital education, media literacy, and education policy. The symposium 
will be opened by a keynote lecture.

In addition to peer feedback, participants will receive comments on 
their papers from senior scholars, either onsite or online. They are 
also encouraged to further develop their texts in dialogue with a senior 
scholar; where appropriate, we may suggest a potential senior 
collaborator, so that the event can also serve as an opportunity to 
initiate new academic collaborations.

Submission guidelines

Please send your submission to (maarit.jaakkola /at/ gu.se) by 1 May 2026:

* An abstract (250–300 words excl. references) outlining the research 
question, theoretical approach, and (if applicable) methodology and 
empirical material
* Author information, including doctoral affiliation and supervisor(s)
* Indication if the paper will or could be co-authored with a senior 
researcher

Important dates

* Abstract submission deadline: 1 May
* Notification of acceptance: 1 June
* Symposium at the University of Innsbruck: 15 September

Practical issues

The symposium is free of charge to the selected participants. 
Participants will cover their own travels and potential accommodation. 
The keynote speaker will be announced at ECREA TWG MLCC's website in May.

Participants receive a certificate that can be used for validating 5 
ECTS (recommendation) at the home institution.

The symposium is organized in collaboration with the Media Education 
Section of the Austrian Association for Educational Research (ÖFEB – 
Österreichische Gesellschaft für Forschung und Entwicklung im 
Bildungswesen), the Young Media Education Network of the Division for 
Media Education of the German Educational Research Association (GERA, 
DGfE – Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft), and Network 06 
of the European Educational Research Association (EERA).

Contact

Website: 
https://ecreamlcc.natminforskning.se/events/symposium-beyond-the-bans-policies-and-pedagogies-in-times-of-restrictions-in-post-digital-era/ 
<https://ecreamlcc.natminforskning.se/events/symposium-beyond-the-bans-policies-and-pedagogies-in-times-of-restrictions-in-post-digital-era/>

For inquiries, please contact the organisers:

Maarit Jaakkola
Chair, ECREA TWG MLCC
Associate Professor, Department of Journalism, Media and Communication
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
(maarit.jaakkola /at/ gu.se)

Petra Missomelius
Associate Professor, Department of Media, Society and Communication
University of Innsbruck, Austria
(petra.missomelius /at/ uibk.ac.at)

Nina Grünberger
Professor, Department of Subject Didactics, Research Group: Media 
Education and Digital Literacy
University of Innsbruck, Austria
(nina.gruenberger /at/ uibk.ac.at)

References

Campbell, M., Edwards, E. J., Pennell, D., Poed, S., Lister, V., 
Gillett-Swan, J., Kelly, A., Zec, D., & Nguyen, T.-A. (2024). Evidence 
for and against banning mobile phones in schools: A scoping review. 
Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools, 34(3), 242–265. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/20556365241270394

Jopling, M. (2023). The postdigital school. In: Jandrić, P. (Ed.) 
Encyclopedia of postdigital science and education. Springer. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35469-4_24-1

European Commission (2026, March 17). The EU approach to age 
verification. 
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-verification

Grigic Magnusson, A., Ott, T., Hård af Segerstad, Y., & Sofkova Hashemi, 
S. (2023). Complexities of Managing a Mobile Phone Ban in the 
Digitalized Schools’ Classroom. Computers in the Schools, 40(3), 
303–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2023.2211062

Radtke, T., Apel, T., Schenkel, K., Keller, J., & von Lindern, E. 
(2022). Digital detox: An effective solution in the smartphone era? A 
systematic literature review. Mobile Media & Communication, 10(2), 
190–215. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579211028647 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579211028647>
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