** apologies for cross-posting **
Dear all,
please find below a CFP for an ICA Preconference that some colleagues and
me are convening on media practices in contemporary societies. Amongst
other topics - see below - we are also interested in papers on media
practices related to political participation and political mobilization.
Best,
Alice
***
Call for the ICA 2018 Pre-Conference
“Articulating Voice. The Expressivity and Performativity of Media Practices”
Sponsored by the Philosophy, Theory and Critique (PTC) Division of the
International Communication Association
Event date: 24 May 2018, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Prague, Czech Republic
Venue: Main Conference Hotel
Deadline for proposals: 10 January 2018 (300-500 words abstract)
Organizers: Christian Pentzold (University of Bremen), Kenzie Burchell
(University of Toronto), Olivier Driessens (University of Cambridge), Alice
Mattoni (Scuola Normale Superiore), John Postill (RMIT University), Cara
Wallis (Texas A&M University)
“Media matter most when they seem not to matter at all.” (Wendy Chun) But
how can we understand the practices through which innovations in media and
digital data move from being unexpected, novel, and impactful to the
negotiated, embedded, and habitual?
The pre-conference takes issue with the mundane yet pervasive nature of
media habits, rituals, and customs. It assesses the purchase of
practice-based approaches in order to see under what conditions and with
what consequences they enter studies in communication and media. In
particular, we invite participants to consider the expressive and
performative dimension of what people actually do and say in relation to
media and to the wider communication ecologies in which these articulations
take place. We are especially interested in contributions that examine how
voices are expressed, represented, or muted and that study the ways
practices of voice combine, overlap, or collide with other mediated
activities in contemporary societies. With this, we strive for an
explanation and critical appreciation of media practices whose
accomplishment is a perennial exercise in which we find ourselves immersed.
We welcome theoretical and/or empirical contributions on questions
including:
● How can we theorize and study the interplay between media-related
practices and technologies, discourses, or institutions? How are these
constellations created, maintained, and transformed? How do praxeological
approaches correspond to other inquiries into speech acts, media rituals,
or media habits?
● What resources and skills are mobilized in order to perform voices?
What is the meaning of the work that goes into activities of voicing? How
do they contribute to or undermine the constitution of public spheres,
privacy, and civic life in past and contemporary societies?
● How do we grasp media practices empirically, and how do we analyze
them across modes of expression, across cultures, different times, and
ages? How can we challenge and advance the kinds of translation and
transformation happening in-between the situated enactment of media
practices and the descriptions and stories of scholarly accounts?
● How can we understand the ways through which media practices are
accomplished in social fields? How are they deployed in struggles for
gaining voice and visibility as in political communication and journalism,
participation and mobilization, health communication, or science
communication? How have media practices changed over time and in relation
to innovations in digitization and datafication?
Responses to the contributions will be given by Elisenda Ardèvol
(Universitat Oberta de Catalunya); Maria Bakardjieva (University of
Calgary), S. Elizabeth Bird (University of Southern Florida); Nick Couldry
(London School of Economics and Political Science).
Please email a 300-500 words proposal to Christian Pentzold (
christian.pentzold@???) by January 10, 2018.
Authors will be notified of their acceptance before January 31, 2018.
Please direct any questions to: Alice Mattoni (alice.mattoni@???) or
Christian Pentzold (christian.pentzold@???).
--
Alice Mattoni
Assistant Professor
Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences
Scuola Normale Superiore
www.picme.sns.it
www.alicemattoni.com
