The #UDC2026 abstract deadline has been extended to July 19! This year's theme — "Media, Press Freedom, and Cultural Production in an Authoritarian Age" — is as urgent as ever. We want to hear what you're working on. 400–700 word abstracts welcome. Submission/Info here: www.democraticcomm.org

Union for Democratic Communications

democraticcomm.org

UDC 2026 Call for Papers - opening May 1! Join us at Ithaca College, Oct 22–24, with @projectcensored and the Park Center for Independent Media, to take up the theme: Media, Press Freedom, and Cultural Production in an Authoritarian Age. Full Theme and Call for Papers: democraticcomm.org

Union for Democratic Communications

democraticcomm.org

UDC is proud to announce a vital new special issue of Democratic Communiqué, guest edited by Bill Yousman: "Freedom of Expression, Campus Politics, Academic Freedom, and the War on Gaza." Read the full issue: openpublishing.library.umass.edu/democratic-c...

Telling Labor's Story: Workers, Media & Politics. Aug. 18 Conference @ Wayne State U with Hamilton Nolan-The Hammer; Kim Kelly-Fight Like Hell; Jonathan Kissam-UE News; Dave Elsila-UAW’s Solidarity Magazine & Annemarie Strassel-UNITE-HERE. events.wayne.edu/2025/08/18/t... @uniondemcomm.bsky.social

CFP Revised and Call Extended for DC Special Issue on Labor and Unionization!!

It was such an amazing time at #UDC2025 last week! I got to meet and reconnect with amazing people! Also presented part of my dissertation where I offer adopting the term “memesque” to address the commodification practices targeting memes and meme culture. @uniondemcomm.bsky.social

It was such a privilege presenting my archival research at the UDC conference in Tacoma, WA, this weekend 🙌🏻 Can’t wait to continue investigating how Robert A. Brady impacted our field. Thank you @uniondemcomm.bsky.social for putting on a great conference!

Unsurprisingly, #UDC2025 was an absolute blast. It was a huge honour to win the Brian Murphy award this year - it will forever live on my bookshelf with pride! Already counting down the 18 months until the next one @uniondemcomm.bsky.social @miccenter.bsky.social @bellisariograded.bsky.social

I am both deeply honored by the prize and thrilled for the first time to experience the warmth and SOLIDARITY that is UDC @uniondemcomm.bsky.social . This is the place to be and to connect!!

Union for Democratic Communications@uniondemcomm.bsky.social · last yr.

At each conference, UDC confers the Dallas Smythe Award to honor a critical media scholar/activist whose work exhibits the spirit of engagement, democracy, teaching, and feistiness to which the UDC is committed. We're thrilled this year to present @couldrynick.bsky.social with that honor #udc2025

Stay in the conversation with the UDC 2025 Starter Pack! Missing from the list? Let us know! go.bsky.app/Fv6xH4y

Illinois at UDC ‘25 @victorpickard.bsky.social Janet Wasko @christina-ceisel.bsky.social @mandytroeger.bsky.social @johnnyrico.bsky.social Brian Dolber @andrew-kennis.bsky.social

Penn State at UDC ‘25

Bellisario Grad Ed@bellisariograded.bsky.social · last yr.

Bellisario at #UDC2025! @uniondemcomm.bsky.social @iamapghfan.bsky.social @tccorrigan1.bsky.social @aaronhere.bsky.social @abbysimmerman.bsky.social @ryanlizardi.bsky.social @yaseminbeykont.bsky.social @sydneyforde.bsky.social

That’s a wrap! Huge thanks to our amazing attendees for sharing their fantastic work and engaging in generative conversation, to our Steering Committee, and most importantly to our Local Organizing Committee at U WashTacoma for their dedication to the org and their incredible work.

Smythe Lecture: we must bear the costs of not accepting AI’s inevitability. We must insist on holding open debate on what it means to make it work toward social ends & community goals Let’s not abandon the too bold and too risky the ideas of facing down corporatization of social life. #udc2025

Smythe Lecture: How ever much we are told the digital future is necessary and invisible and we can’t do anything about it, it’s a lie. We don’t need to retrofit the present for the inevitable future. Lets cooperate with each other to achieve a non-cooperation with corporate power. #udc2025

Smythe Lecture: platforms even, when we love them, produce the social for capital. If we want to change how the world is for us, its necessary to resist--head on--the corporatization of how we interact socially #udc2025

Smythe Lecture: our social world is a Leviathan in fragments from expansion of pure environmental extractivism; social extractivism from social media platforms allowed to build the wrong kind of social will; increasing role of commercial AI in capturing the forces of cognitive production #udc2025

Smythe Lecture: I don't trust oversimple recipes for change that can be read out of a rule book, but I also refuse to give up on change #udc2025

Smythe Lecture: my avoidance of oversimple links to practical politics is because while I hope for a better configuration of everything compared to where we are now, I am skeptical that the path is obvious or easily acceptable #udc2025

Smythe Lecture: effective theory is a tool for everyday life and everyday resistance. To regard the abstraction of theory with suspicion is to miss the power and practicability of theory #udc2025

At each conference, UDC confers the Dallas Smythe Award to honor a critical media scholar/activist whose work exhibits the spirit of engagement, democracy, teaching, and feistiness to which the UDC is committed. We're thrilled this year to present @couldrynick.bsky.social with that honor #udc2025

Huge congrats to @sydneyforde.bsky.social for winning UDC's 2025 Brian Murphy Student Paper Award for her paper is "The Dialectics of Broadband" #udc2025

No better way to end #udc2025 than with the Dallas Smythe Lecture from this year's awardee @couldrynick.bsky.social

Paulus: workers identify working conditions (job security, labor rights, decreased in freelance work) and collective organization (ability to fight the system that incubates sexual assault in a more systemic way) can go a long way toward protection #udc2025

Paulus: the "why" may be more understood, but the "what" has a lot of gaps and doesn't address systemic analysis or issues #udc2025

Now: Paulus on making safer work environments in German cultural and media industries. Despite progress, sexualized power is alive and well, so asking why are cultural and media industries so vulnerable to abuses of power and what can be done? #udc2025

Stoltzfus & Flores: in our current moment Amish people are seen as public health heroes - a white, hyper-reproductive, and antivaxed ideal #udc2025

UDCers: be sure to stop the by the registration table before leaving tonight to get a special discount code for Smythe Award Winner @couldrynick.bsky.social new book THE SPACE OF THE WORLD

Happening now: Stoltzfus & Flores on Christian Nationalist policies, eugenics, and genetic resistance, comparing how language and narratives to genetically fabricate and overdetermine two opposite groups - Amish and Mexicans #udc2025

Hey, #academicsky! Are you following the movement to create Mutual Academic Defense Compacts (MADC) among colleges and universities across the US to defend #highered? The UMass Amherst Faculty Senate is tracking all MADC resolutions. The movement is gaining steam! www.umass.edu/senate/madcs...