Call for Papers

Media and Participation

International Conference, Media and Communication, Lund University, Sweden, March 29th 2012. Organisers Professor Annette Hill, Michael Rübsamen and Tina Askanius.

Media and participation signals the merging of ideas around democracy, power and politics, and producers, audiences and publics. Media and participation includes a broad understanding of our involvement, engagement and interaction with politics and civic cultures. Media and participation also considers the individual, audience and public as an agent of change, engaged in dynamic practices. This range of ideas across the public and popular makes this topic a rich site for analysis. To understand media and participation today involves historical, social, political and cultural perspectives on such issues as live events, social networking, political communication, museums and galleries, sports, talkshows and reality TV. 

The conference will be organised thematically, focusing on the political, social, cultural and historical approaches to media and participation. Papers should address one or more of the following research questions  - what is the role of social, political and cultural participation in people’s experiences of the media? What is the relationship between the political and non-political in cases of media participation? How can different approaches and methods open up our understanding of media and participation? The aim is to provide a platform for international scholars from disciplines such as media, communication and cultural studies, film studies, sociology and political communication to debate the complexity and ambiguity at work in public participation in mediated spaces and places.

The schedule includes a combination of keynote addresses, pre-constituted panels, and open panels. Confirmed speakers include Raymond Boyle (Glasgow University, UK), John Corner (Leeds University, UK), Natalie Fenton (Goldsmith’s College, UK), Peter Lunt (Leicester University, UK). Other invited speakers include Stina Bengtsson (Södertörn University, Sweden), Göran Bolin (Södertörn University, Sweden), Nico Carpentier (Loughborough University, UK), Peter Dahlgren (Lund University, Sweden), Tobias Olsson (Jönköping University, Sweden), Kim Schrøder (Roskilde University, Denmark), and Kristina Riegert (Stockholm University, Sweden).

Please submit abstracts of 300 words in English via the conference website

http://mediaparticipation2012.se online registration form – deadline December 9^th 2011. For further information contact Michael Rübsamen ([log in to unmask]). There is a registration fee of 650 SEK (70 Euros) that covers food and drink for the day and an evening buffet.