[Air-L] ECREA pre-con Harmful Visuals in Vienna

[Özkula Suay]

Dear Colleagues,

We are happy to announce that we are organising a preconference for this year’s ECC in Brno on the timely and contested topic of  “Harmful Visual – cases, practices and ethics”. It will take place in Vienna (only a 1,5h train ride to/from Brno) on the day before the main conference.

We are looking forward to your submissions!

ECC 26 Preconference

HARMFUL VISUALS: CASES, PRACTICES, AND ETHICS

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

Submission Deadline 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/ <https://visualculturesecrea.wordpress.com/harmful-visuals-precon-2026/>

Please note that this is an in-person conference only. Event registration is free-of-charge, catering will be provided, and the rooms are accessible.


We look forward to your submissions.

Best wishes,

ECREA Section Visual Cultures:
Maria Schreiber, University of 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
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[I support fair work & do not expect colleagues to read or respond to emails after-hours, during weekends, outside of their part-time allocation, or during strike periods]

Dr. Suay Melisa Özkula
Post-doctoral Researcher
MSCA project P.I. DIGI-EMP<https://www.sis.unitn.it/2753/international-experiences-of-digital-empowerment-in-a-climate-justice-frame>
Listserv facilitator Visual Methods Collective<https://visualculturesecrea.wordpress.com/the-visual-methods-collective/>
Google Scholar profile<https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RGa0k7kAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao> & Department Profile<https://www.kowi-salzburg.at/team/oezkula-suay/>

Center for ICT&S
Fachbereich Kommunikationswissenschaft
Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg
Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18 | 5020 Salzburg | Österreich/Austria

Recent work:
Hate Speech and Democratic Erosion: The Exclusionary Vocabulary of Online Misogyny<https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/romanica-cracoviensia/artykul/discorso-dodio-ed-erosione-democratica-il-vocabolario-escludente-della-misoginia-online>
Teaching digital research methods in sociology<https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/teaching-research-methods-in-sociology-9781035320219.html>
Where is the Global South? Northern Visibilities in Digital Activism Research<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051241299835>
Researching visual protest and politics with “extra-hard” data<https://publicera.kb.se/jdsr/article/view/32149>
Special Issue on Methods in Visual Politics and Protest: Deconstruction, Reflexivity & femmix<https://jdsr.se/ojs/index.php/jdsr/article/view/278>
Special Issue on Methods in Visual Politics and Protest: mixed methods, data curation & anti-publics<https://publicera.kb.se/jdsr/article/view/23194>
Affordances and platformed visual misogyny: a call for feminist approaches in visual methods<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2024.2311355>