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