[Commlist] CFP: Researching AI and Labour in Creative Media Ecologies [IAMCR Workshop]

CALL FOR PAPERS
*Global Perspectives on Methods, Approaches, and Challenges of
Researching AI and Labour in Creative Media Ecologies*

An IAMCR Post-Conference Workshop

Friday, 18 July 2025, 9:00 - 17:00
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore

Description of the workshop:

The aim of the workshop is to gather and discuss the diversity of
methodologies and theoretical approaches that we adopt in our research
on how AI is increasingly being integrated into media production
processes and the impacts on creative labour practices. We seek
contributions from media and communications scholars working on any
aspect of the creative media industries with a specific focus on
research into media labour and AI. Contributions should foreground the
debates about AI hegemony in both industry and research dominated by
specific conglomerates and research agendas, exploring the alternative
practices, research methods, and imaginations of AI in creative and
media industries.

*Contributions will form the basis of a special issue to be published
with a top media and communications journal (TBC).

Media practitioners around the world are grappling with the onward
march of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with some
embracing the creative possibilities that can arise from generative AI
while others remain wary and critical of the impact that AI-led
automation may have on their craft and the sustainability of the
industry. So too are media and communication scholars from across
diverse sub-fields (e.g. platform studies, media policy, media
production studies, political economy, journalism and political
communication, health and environmental communication, media
psychology, advertising and corporate communication, human-machine
communication, critical cultural studies, environmental humanities)
grappling with the question of how to make sense of the place, work,
and impacts of AI on media ecologies from different scholarly
perspectives (e.g., Guzman & Lewis, 2024; Celis Bueno et al., 2024;
Ferrari et al., 2024; Lin, 2024).

Topics under discussion may include challenges in fieldwork,
opportunities of combining analytical frameworks, and/or identifying
blind-spots in our disciplinary fields. Contributions should be
centred on methods and theoretical approaches used in the study of the
labour practices of using generative AI tools developed and used in
different regions for creative media production.

We seek contributions that address field sites from across the globe
as a necessary act of diversifying the current scholarship on AI and
the media industries. An important goal of this workshop therefore is
to emphasise global perspectives, given the need to understand how
different methods and approaches might work in different
culture-industrial contexts.

Questions that contributors might consider include (but are not limited to):

·         How do we evaluate the political, economic, cultural, and
ethical implications of AI tools in creative media ecologies?
·         What interdisciplinary conceptual lenses might be necessary
to study the new relationships between human creative workers and AI
‘agents’ in media production?
·         What challenges and opportunities arise when conducting
comparative work across different culture-industrial sites, AI tools,
media sectors, and professions?
·         How can we as researchers better engage with diverse
stakeholders in our research, ranging from creative practitioners to
labour unions, policymakers, and tech developers?

Participation:

Please send an extended abstract of ca. 1,500 words including
references to <(peisze.chow /at/ ntu.edu.sg)> no later than 1 April 2025.
Include the following in the subject line: “IAMCR workshop
application: <title of your paper>”.

Successful applicants will be informed by end-April 2025.

There is no additional cost to participate in the workshop. IAMCR
membership is not a prerequisite to participate in the workshop.


Proposed timeline:

1st April 2025: Deadline forsubmissions of abstracts.

End-April 2025: Acceptance emails sent to contributors.

By end-June 2025: Full drafts of extended abstracts/papers to be
submitted and circulated to all workshop participants.

18 July 2025: Workshop in Singapore - extensive round of feedback and
discussion of drafts with all contributors.

August-December 2025: Revisions and writing.

January 2026: Papers to be sent out for double-blind peer review
through journal.


Organising Team:

·         Pei-Sze Chow, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

·         Jindong (Leo) Liu, Education University of Hong Kong

·         Catarina Duff Burnay, Universidade Católica Portuguesa Lisboa

·         Paulo Nuno Vicente, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa,


References

Celis Bueno, C., Chow, PS. & Popowicz, A.(2024). ‘Not “what”, but
“where is creativity?”: towards a relational-materialist approach to
generative AI.’ AI & Society.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-01921-3

Guzman, Andrea L., and Seth C. Lewis. 2024. ‘What Generative AI Means
for the Media Industries, and Why It Matters to Study the Collective
Consequences for Advertising, Journalism, and Public Relations’.
Emerging Media, October, 1–9.
https://doi.org/10.1177/27523543241289239.

Ferrari, F., van Dijck, J., & van den Bosch, A. (2023). Observe,
inspect, modify: Three conditions for generative AI governance. New
Media & Society, 14614448231214811.

Lin, B. (2024). The AI chatbot always flirts with me, should I flirt
back: From the McDonaldization of Friendship to the Robotization of
Love. Social Media + Society, 10(4), 20563051241296229.
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