From 5 to 6 December 2019 the workshop 'The Politics of Privacy' will take place at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz under the umbrella of the ECREA Communication and Democracy section.

On Thursday, 5 December, we will start at 4 p.m. with a fishbowl debate. Privacy lawyer Simon Assion discusses political dimensions of privacy with our keynote speakers Caroline Krohn and Sami Coll. Feel invited to join the debate in the INFOBOX on the campus of the University of Mainz.

A workshop for registered participants will follow on Friday 6 December with contributions by Caroline Krohn, Sami Coll, Heikki Heikkilä, Łukasz Wojtkowski, Barbara Brodzińska-Mirowska, Aleksandra Seklecka, Karoline Burno-Kaliszuk, Grażyna Stachyra, Sarah Young, Leyla Dogruel, Tetyana Lokot, Philipp Masur and Víctor Hernández-Santaolalla.

The full programme is available here. Further Informationen can be found on the workshop's homepage.

We announce the recent publication of a Open Access special issue of Mediatization Studies on the subject of privacy and surveillance. Joint editors are Johanna E. Möller (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) and Jakub Nowak (Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin). The issue contains contributions by young researchers from Germany, Austria and Poland, some of which were presented and discussed at a workshop with researchers and practitioners at Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin in March 2018.

The following articles can be accessed and downloaded:

• Helena Atteneder und Bernhard Collini-Nocker: Geomedia and privacy in context. Paradoxical behavior or the unwitting sharing of geodata with digital platforms?
• Grzegorz Ptaszek: Surveillance capitalism and privacy. Knowledge and attitudes on surveillance capitalism and online institutional privacy protection practices among adolescents in Poland
• Sven Braun und Anna-Marie Ostveen: Encryption for the masses? An analysis of PGP key usage
• Mareile Kaufmann “Now you see me – now you don’t!” – Practices and purposes of hacking online surveillance
• Florian Meissner, Gerret von Nordheim: Exploration of a fragmented discourse. Privacy and data security in Süddeutsche Zeitung: 2007–2017
• Linda Monsees: Encryption as a Security Technology. Notes on the German Debate on encryption, Uncertainty and Risk
• Piotr Celiński: Mediations of the body: towards biosurveillance and biocontrol

Both, the workshop and the Special Issue were generously supported by the Polish-German Science Foundation.

The research project Cross-Border Media Communication (CBMC) presents a new journal article, recently published online in the Journal of Media Business Studies. The CBMC project team, including Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen, Pamela Nölleke-Przybylski (Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), Matthias Karmasin, Denise Voci (University of Klagenfurt) as well as M. Bjørn von Rimscha and Johanna E. Möller (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), focuses on the cross-border activities of media companies. The recently published open access article shows that organizational ambidexterity is a fruitful approach to investigate such activities. In the course of digitisation processes, it becomes apparent that explorative internationalisation strategies are gaining in importance compared to explorative ones.

The ECREA Communication and Democracy section invites submissions for the Workshop "The Politics of Privacy", taking place at the Department of Communication at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, December 5-6, 2019. Keynote speakers Constance Kurz (Chaos Computer Club) and Sami Coll (University of Geneva) have confirmed their participation.

< click on icon and see extended CALL FOR PAPERS

Päivi Maijanen-Kyläheiko from the Lapeenranta University of Technology - School of Business and Management is visiting the working group in Mainz as an Erasmus+ teaching exchange. She is to give a lecture on dynamic resources and ambidexterity for the students of media management and will also present in our department wide research seminar. Furthermore we will discuss possibilities for future collaborations.

A warm welcome and a we are looking forward to work with you!

M. Bjørn von Rimscha and Ulrike Rohn (University of Tallinn) have just started a Series on Media Industries at Springer:

The media industries constitute an important sector of national and transnational economies; not only do they contribute significantly to the GDP of a country, they also serve cultural, political, and societal functions. Production conditions and the production output of the media industries are as much a result of their economic, cultural, political and societal environment as an influence on these spheres of life.
The series features research that considers this duality, and it focuses on the influencing factors that shape the structures and output of the media industry on all levels. This includes research on the macroeconomic level of media markets and industries, including policies and regulations; research on the organizational level of managerial decisionmaking and challenges; as well as research on the individual level of media workers. We welcome transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives.
The disciplines, approaches and theories applied may include (but are not limited to): media economics; political economy; media and creative industries studies; media policy studies; media management; organizational cultural theories; technology, creative and innovation theories; media and communication studies; audience and consumer theories; critical cultural media studies; professional cultural theories; and social psychology.
All volumes in the series are peer-reviewed.

If you are interested in publishing your manuscript in the series or if you have an idea for an edited volume that might fit in the series, please do not hesitate to get in contact.