Research seminar: The mediatization of intimate experiences

25 & 26 November 2009, 9:30-18:00 & 10.00-16:15

University of Copenhagen, KUA/ Southern Campus, room 27.0.17

The main aim of this seminar is to contribute to the theoretical and empirical exchange and discussion about the interaction between the media and aspects of intimacy. In order to approach this research field we especially invite contributions, which make use of the perspectives of ‘mediatization’ or ‘mediation’ in order to expand the understanding of the ways in which media and intimacy interact and converge. Sexuality and emotional bonding are core characteristics of human nature. However, these characteristics are always historically and culturally structured, and like other cultural institutions they are constitutive of human societies. The interaction between media and intimacy takes on various forms depending on different technologies, genres, and formats like for example mobile phones, social network sites, transformational reality programs, and films. The use of social and personal media like network sites and mobile phones influences the ways in which we search for partners and the way we make emotional bonds. Social and personal media can structure the very performance of intimacy by serving as the space for the actual intimate practices – as for example in user-generated porn and in avatar sex and emotional interaction. Turning to the more traditional mass-media, they influence the understanding and the performance of intimacy, as well as the construction of sexual and emotional identity. The seminar invites quantitative, qualitative, ethnographic, sociological, cognitive and textual approaches to the question of how media contributes to the sense making of sex, emotions, and relationships – and to the question of how the media transform and affects sexual, emotional, and relational interaction.

Everybody is welcome – no submission.

The seminar is arranged by the research group: The Mediatization of Culture. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen

Program with abstracts: http://medialisering.mef.ku.dk/autumn_2009/dokument/dokument/

Cecilie Givskov
PhD Fellow, MA (ed)
Principle Project Manager of CEMES for Young Scholars (CYS)