Call for papers Vol. 20 / N° 2
InMediaciones de la Comunicación
Volume 20 / N° 2 (July-December 2025)
We are pleased to inform that the call for papers is open to publish articles and/or reviews in the Volume 20 / N° 2 (July-December 2025) of InMediaciones de la Comunicación, academic journal published since 1998 by Universidad ORT Uruguay.
The purpose is focused on the publication of original and unpublished articles and/or reviews and the dissemination of interviews, essays and research reports that take place in the field of communication and its related disciplines, with special attention to the processes of social mediatization and the study of contemporary media phenomena. Its content is aimed at researchers, professors, undergraduate and postgraduate students and people with an interest in all areas of communication. Before publication, the manuscripts are reviewed, in the first instance, by the Associate Editors and the Academic Committee, made up of experts from different countries, the Guest Editor of each number, and then they are evaluated through the double-blind system with the intervention of external referees.
The journal carries out an open access policy, receives contributions written in Spanish, English and Portuguese and the authors do not have to pay any cost for the processing or publication of the manuscripts. InMediaciones de la Comunicación is published in paper and digital formats with the aim of promoting the open publication of manuscripts that are the result of the work carried out by researchers with the aim of giving impetus to addressing the most diverse topics and problems that cross the field of communication. Over the years, it has had the contribution of researchers and academic referents with a recognized professional track record, who provide their views on the debates raised by the permanent renewal of the communication phenomena in Latin America and the world.
Thematic of Volume 20 / N° 2 (July-December 2025)
VISAGE MEDIATIZATION
Art, identities, politics and artificial intelligence in contemporary times
Fundamentals of the Call
Visage studies have a long tradition in the fields of anthropology, philosophy, art, semiotics, and computer science. What meanings do faces give to bodies? When does the transition between face and visage occur? What are the minimum phenomenological requirements for the perception of a visage to occur? When does a visage become “friendly”, “recognizable”, “identifiable”? These are some of the questions that are of interest to different disciplines. The face is a complex object from its own linguistic definition: face, countenance, visage, are lexemes that designate diverse nuances of a mysterious entity. For some authors, the visage can be understood as a bastion of singularity and openness towards another (Levinas, 1967), it is a border device and a fundamental axis of communication; it can also be considered as a privileged semiotic regime to account for a set of transformations related to subjectivity (Boero, 2020).
There is a substantive difference between “face” and “visage”. While the first is physical or natural, the second is a human work. As Finol and Finol (2021) suggest, the visage implies an experiential journey that occurs thanks to the co-text (the face, the head, the body) and the contexts (choreography, spectacle, culture, history, etc.). There are faces that, under certain conditions, cease to be a set of biological cells and become a hive of semiotic cells, in whose configuration and reconfiguration various signs, discourses and texts work incessantly (Voto, Finol & Leone, 2021).
In the current times of new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), where mediatization processes have acquired special attention from researchers from different parts of the world, visages are instantly shared on social networks, translating into bodily life stories through the meaning of devices that biopolitically organize bodies and define inclusions and exclusions, thus configuring “acceptable” and other “disposable” faces in social discourse (Delupi, 2023). In this way, investigating the production, dissemination, circulation and reception of visages constitutes a fundamental task in the face of an uncertain future regarding the limits and regulations of Web 3.0, which includes, as the top leaders of the technology industry intend, the metaverse and augmented reality. Furthermore, we must not forget that these advances also produced devices focused on facial recognition, with cameras installed and used to capture visages in real time – whether for health or safety reasons – which means that we are increasingly exposed to the identification of our faces, often recorded illegally without a solid legal basis.
Finally, it is necessary to point out that this issue of InMediaciones de la Comunicación, focused on the mediatization of the visage on a planetary scale, pays special attention to the problem in Latin America, which implies considering the history and culture of this region with all the divergences and convergences that run through them: We refer to past times and regional conflicts that are reflected in contemporary visages and become flesh, paper and pixels in decolonial paradigms and critical foundations of Eurocentric views. The bodies, the materials, and the social imaginaries, are added in a hybrid, crossbred spectrum and in a narrative mix that produces chronotopic facespheres that represent Latin American cultures, given that visages are always a result of a situated dimension.
The purpose of this call is to generate the opening of a space for reflection on visage mediatization, taking into account various axes that are of vital importance: the ways in which visages circulate in art, politics and contemporary culture in general; the place of the visage in social networks and what AI generates; the problematic aspects linked to cybersecurity and contemporary facial recognition devices; indigenous faces as an update of representational disputes; among other topics that account for a theme that has a long history in the field of research, but at the same time acquires new meanings in the era of the digitalized visage. It is therefore a question of investigating the way in which visages circulate in virtual space through various technological devices, since each visage is a trace of its time and bears the marks of its cultural environment.
Axes for the presentation of articles
- Visages in art and culture
- Visage politics, activism and camouflage
- The place of the visage in social media and artificial intelligence
- Cybersecurity and facial recognition devices
- Indigenous faces: identity and otherness of the native peoples
GUEST EDITORS
Massimo Leone. Doctor of Religious Sciences, Sorbonne Université (Francia). Doctor in Art History, Universität Freiburg (Alemania). Professor of “Communication Philosophy”, “Cultural Semiotics” y “Visual Semiotics”, Università degli Studi di Torino (Italia). Professor of “Semiotics”, Universidad de Shanghai (China). Director, Institute of Religious Studies in the “Bruno Kessler Foundation” de Trento (Italia). Associate member of Cambridge Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge (United States). He has been a visiting professor at universities on the five continents. He has written fifteen books and published more than six hundred articles in the fields of semiotics, religious studies and visual studies. He was awarded an ERP grant - “Consolidator” in 2018 and an ERP grant - “Proof of Concept” in 2022. Chief editor of Lexia, the journal of the Interdisciplinary Research Center in Communication of Università degli Studi di Torino. He is also co-editor-in-chief of Semiotics, journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies published by de Gruyter, and coeditor of the series of books “I Saggi di Lexia” (Aracne Publishing House), “Semiotics of Religion” (Walter de Gruyter Publishing House) and “Advances in Face Studies” (Routledge Publishing House). He is the author of fifteen books, has edited more than sixty collective volumes and has published more than six hundred articles on semiotics, religious studies and visual studies.
Celia Rubina. Doctor in Sciences du Langage, Université de Toulouse (Francia). Graduate in Hispanic Literature, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Perú). Senior Lecturer, Academic Department of Communications, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She is a member of academic associations such as the International Association of Semiotics Studies, the Latin American Federation of Semiotics and the Institute Riva-Agüero of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She was a member of the Ethics Tribunal of the Peruvian Press Council and of the board of directors of the National Radio and Television Institute of Peru. Is part of the board of directors of the Editorial Fund at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She has academic publications in the different academic areas where she has developed her research, especially in discursive semiotics and visual semiotics. She has a special interest in the linguistic, social, religious and cultural practices of the Peruvian Andes with studies on oral traditions, colonial religious iconography, documentary photography, popular cuisine, religious festivals and pilgrimage rituals.
Baal Delupi. Doctor in Semiotics, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina). Graduate in Social Communication, Universidad Católica de Santiago del Estero (Argentina). Postdoctoral Fellow, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (Argentina). Graduated from the Updating Program in Artistic Practices and Politics in Latin America by Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina). He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Università di Torino (Italia), Visiting Scholars at the Centre of Discourse Studies of Barcelona (Spain) and has a Postdoctoral path in Social and Human Sciences from the Center for Advanced Studies of Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Professor, Universidad Provincial de Córdoba (UPC). He worked as a teacher at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and Universidad Nacional of La Pampa (Argentina), in addition to having been a visiting professor at Universidad de Cádiz (Spain) and at Universidad de Murcia (Spain). Member of the research program “Social Discourse. The visible and the stated”, Centro de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. His line of research intersects art, politics and intellectuality in independent Argentine cultural production.
DEADLINE FOR ARTICLE SUBMISSION: March 15th, 2025
DATE FOR VOLUME PUBLICATION: continuous publishing- July-December 2025
Journal website – registration and submission of the application through the platform: https://revistas.ort.edu.uy/inmediaciones-de-la-comunicacion
Characteristics that the postulated articles must present: https://revistas.ort.edu.uy/inmediaciones-de-la-comunicacion/about/submissions#authorGuidelines
Contact emails: inmediaciones@ort.edu.uy / cossia@ort.edu.uy
Academic Committee
InMediaciones de la Comunicación
Universidad ORT Uruguay
Cited bibliography
Barbotto, S., Voto, C. & Leone, M. (Editores) (2022). Rostrosferas de América Latina. Culturas, traducciones y mestisajes. Lexia, 44(1).
Boero, S. (2020). Rostros y umbrales: algunos aportes en torno a tres materiales estéticos. Casarín, M. (coord.), Derivas de la literatura del siglo XXI (pp. 79-95). Ciudad de Córdoba: EDICEA.
Delupi, B. (2023). Concealment of the face and new physiognomies. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 19(3), pp. 3-13.
Finol, J. E. & Finol, D. E. (2021). La rostrosfera: mediatizaciones entre lo analógico, lo real y lo digital. DeSignis - Hors serie 1, pp. 11-24. Recovered from: https://www.designisfels.net/hors-serie/el-rostro-en-el-horizonte-digital-latinoamericano/
Lévinas, E. (1967). Découvrant l’Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. París: Vrin.
Voto, C., Finol, J. E & Leone, M. (Editores) (2021). Presentación. El rostro digital latinoamericano: desafíos y apuestas. DeSignis - Hors serie 1, pp. 11-24. Recovered from: https://www.designisfels.net/hors-serie/el-rostro-en-el-horizonte-digital-latinoamericano/
