[Commlist] Comunicação e Sociedade: call for papers on "Media Transparency"

COMUNICAÇÃO E SOCIEDADE: CALL FOR PAPERS ON "MEDIA TRANSPARENCY"

The call for papers for the journal Comunicação e Sociedade on "Media 
Transparency" is open from December 11 to March 15, 2024.

THEMATIC EDITORS: Elsa Costa e Silva (CECS, Universidade do Minho, 
Portugal), Tales Tomaz (Universität Salzburgo, Austria) e Mariana 
Lameiras (CECS, Universidade do Minho / United Nations University 
Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance, Portugal).

Transparency has become a buzzword in media policy and regulation. 
Increasingly considered a requirement for free and democratic 
functioning, transparency is nowadays a consensual policy response to 
concerns about the lack of media pluralism and the declining trust in 
journalism. This framework runs under the assumption that accountable 
journalism must be guaranteed, given that the first condition of an 
informed citizenry is access to accurate facts on which people can rely 
to make decisions (Strömbäck, 2005). Media, particularly public service, 
has proven to be important for people's capacity to be informed (Aalberg 
& Curran, 2012).
There is a growing importance attributed to transparency at the European 
level. The Media Freedom Act, proposed by the European Commission in 
September 2022, intends to make mandatory that media service providers 
publicly disclose information about their ownership, and proposes new 
requirements for the allocation of state advertising in order to make it 
transparent and non-discriminatory. And while these new provisions still 
have now to be discussed and approved by the European Parliament and the 
member states, the European Commission has also commissioned a pilot 
project to set up a media ownership monitor. Under the scope of this 
project, a database has already been made available, stressing the 
different situations of the countries.
The importance attributed to transparency at the policy level is one of 
the reasons why the concept needs to be addressed, because, in spite of 
its normative value, its implementation remains ambiguous. The ethical 
importance of transparency remains high in the public agenda, but "the 
complexity in operationalization and grounded practice" (Bock & Lazard, 
2021) should be acknowledged and reflected upon, as well as the 
limitations that hinder transparency from becoming a fully accomplished 
ideal (Ananny and Crawford, 2018).

This thematic number seeks contributions that provide critical accounts 
of the transparency principle, either in conceptual terms or empirical 
settings. In particular, this special issue accepts contributions that 
addresses, among others, the following topics:
- Normativities of transparency
. the role of the media in enhancing transparency in the public sphere 
and democratic societies
. ethos of self-transparency in professional media

- Transparency in media production
. practices and levels of transparency in regional and national media
. self-regulation instruments and the role of councils, unions and other 
professional organisations
. impact of public relations agencies and professionalised sources

- Transparency in ownership and control:
. ownership models and obstacles to transparency from intricate, 
cross-border and cross-business structures
. disclosure of financial support both from corporate and state power 
and strategies of funders to obfuscate influence
. regulatory, co-regulatory and self-regulatory frameworks of governance

- Transparency in media distribution:
. disclosure of platforms' criteria for distribution of professional 
media content
. transparency in current models of print and broadcast distribution

REFERENCES:
Aalberg, T., & Curran, J. (2012). How media inform democracy: Central 
debates. In How Media Inform Democracy (pp. 17-28). Routledge.
Ananny, M., & Crawford, K. (2018). Seeing without knowing: Limitations 
of the transparency ideal and its application to algorithmic 
accountability. new media & society, 20(3), 973-989.
Bock, M. A., & Lazard, A. (2021). Narrative transparency and 
credibility: First-person process statements in video news. Convergence, 
13548565211027813.
Strömbäck, J. (2005). In search of a standard: Four models of democracy 
and their normative implications for journalism. Journalism studies, 
6(3), 331-345.

Proposals submission (full manuscript) | December 11, 2023 to March 15, 2024

LANGUAGE
Papers can be submitted in English or Portuguese. The articles selected 
for publication will be translated into Portuguese or English, 
respectively, being published in both languages.

EDITING AND SUBMISSION
Comunicação e Sociedade is an open-access academic journal, operating 
according to demanding standards of the peer-review system, and operates 
on a double-blind peer-review process. After submission, each paper will 
be distributed to two reviewers, previously invited to evaluate it 
according to its academic quality, originality and relevance to the 
objectives and scope of the theme.
Originals should be submitted through the 
journal's https://revistacomsoc.pt/. When accessing Comunicação e 
Sociedade for the first time, you must register before submitting your 
article (instructions to register https://revistacomsoc.pt/user/register).
Refer to the guidelines for 
authors https://revistacomsoc.pt/about/submissions
For further information, please 
contact: mailto:(comunicacaoesociedade /at/ ics.uminho.pt)

No payment from the authors will be required.
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