SMID – Sammenslutningen af medieforskere i Danmark

Call for Papers/Abstracts

Deadline-Abstracts/Papers: September 15
Accepted full papers: December 15

Northern Lights. Film and Media Studies Yearbook
 
Vol. 7 (2009): Film, Media & Politics
Eds. Ib Bondebjerg & Jens Hoff
 
The role of media in politics has been the object of increased interdisciplinary research in the last decade, but often in separate academic circles. This volume wants to combine studies in political communication and the media with studies of the representation of politics in film and media. We invite scholars from both social science and the humanities and welcome contributions both on the role of media for contemporary politics and the public sphere and the different genres and ways in which politics have been dealt with and represented in the media. By media we mean traditional print media and broadcast media, film and the new digital media and the internet, and we welcome both articles that deal with politics and factual and journalistic genres and fictional genres.
 
Recent research has focused on different dimensions of this development. Thus, one strand of research has focused on the significant changes in the public sphere brought about by the “media explosion” bringing in new media (e.g the internet), increased (global) coverage and new genres. This development has put pressure on traditional ways of producing news and on political journalism, which has resulted in mash-up genres like “infotainment” or “talk-show news”, and what some has called a “restyling of politics”, where politicians, political journalists and commentators increasingly have to act on the conditions of the media and its popular genres.
            Another strand of research has focused on how this new media landscape changes the game for all suppliers in the field: for traditional newspapers, which have to reorient their business model towards internet audiences, for the entertainment industry confronted with the harsh reality of the “free download” for TV and radio, adapting to the digital world of unlimited spectrum, and for political actors, who have to become “media-wise”, and develop new forms of PR and strategic communication/spin.
            A third dimension of research has focused on what the media explosion means for the audience(s). We see a radical segmentation of the audience, where elite and mass, old and young, majorities and minorities watch different news and use different channels/media. The implications of this development are evaluated very differently: some see it as creating better possibilities for access to the public(s) and more openness others se the new “audience focused culture” (in especially TV and radio) as a “tabloidization”.
 
This anthology will take the analysis and discussion of these developments a step further. Concerning the “restyling of politics” it will deal with the aesthetics of political representation in film and media, as well as the implications of political style, and the shifting forms of the political persona, for the media as well as for politics. When it comes to the consequences of the new media landscape for suppliers; especially political actors, the anthology will deal with their media strategies, and the way these might restructure whole organizations. Concerning audiences more and better studies of possible segmentation, access and empowerment/disempowerment is much in demand.
 
For these reasons we encourage submission of articles dealing with television, film and the internet, and would like to see articles dealing with politics in both fictional as well as in more journalistic and documentary forms. Articles dealing with major political events, and the role of film and other media in reporting or narrating these events will also be most welcome.
 
Potential themes of articles:
 
- The “media explosion” and its consequences for the public sphere
- The “restyling of politics”; new political aesthetics and persona
- Media, spin and politics
- The consequences of the mediatisation of politics for audiences and for -citizenship
- Political media events
- Political documentary film and television
- Film, media and the “war on terror”
- Hollywood and contemporary politics
Deadlines
Abstracts/papers Sept. 15, 2008

Full papers Dec. 15, 2008

Publication Sept. 1, 2009

Papers/abstracts should be sent to: Ib Bondebjerg, bonde@hum.ku.dk

Northern Lights. Filma nd Media Studies Yearbook, is a peer reviewed international journal published by Intellect Books. For further Information see:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php?issn=1601829X

September 9, 2008, 10-17, KUA

Speaker: Brian McNair, professor, University of Strathclyde, Scotland

Cultural chaos and the European communicative space – between nation
and globalisation

In this presentation Brian McNair will explore the implications of  current trends in communication and culture for the construction and maintenance of a European public sphere. As boundaries traditionally separating the public spheres of nation states dissolve under the
influence of transnational and global communication media, what kind of common communicative space is emerging at the European level, and
how does it interface with national public spheres on the one hand,  and globalised information flows on the other?? As the Lisbon treaty is rejected by the voters of Ireland , can we identify gaps in  European political communication which make Europe-wide consensus and
progress on economic, political and cultural union more difficult to  achieve? What role are the media playing in the ‘democratic deficit’  often said to characterise the European project? Why, when there is so much information in circulation across Europe, is there so little
coverage and public understanding of a topic such as the Lisbon treaty, and the wider reform agenda in general? The lecture will develop arguments set out in Cultural Chaos (2006), updating and incorporating subsequent events, in particular attempts to introduce the Lisbon treaty.

Brian McNair is Professor of Journalism and Communication at the University of Strathclyde . He is the author of many books and articles on media and democracy, including Journalism and Democracy (2000) and Cultural Chaos. Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised world (2006).

See full programme: http://medec.ku.dk/cecilie/medek_seminar/9.9.program

The European integration is one of the most important transnational processes in the overall process of globalisation and the most important factor in the post war development of the national welfare societies and democracies in Europe. The EU-project is by now not just an economic project, but has far reaching implications also for the social, political and cultural dimensions of the nation states of Europe. MEDEC is covering two local research priorities with the objective to contribute to knowledge about the interaction between the political agendas of the EU and the social and cultural dimensions related to the European integration. The research perspective is interdisciplinary and transnational and consists of a network of scholars from political science, law, sociology, anthropology, history, language, cultural studies and media studies.

Read more: http://medec.ku.dk/

SMID inviterer til årsmøde den 4.-5. december på Hotel Haraldskær ved Vejle. Temaet er Medialisering og Kulturelle fællesskaber, og der vil være oplæg af blandt andre Friedrich Krotz, Charlotte Brunsdon, Gunhild Agger, Stig Hjarvard og Henrik Dahl. Der er mulighed for præsentation af papers og posters både inden for og uden for tema.

Download programmet for årsmødet 2008 (opdateret version)