SMID – Sammenslutningen af medieforskere i Danmark

Challenging Genre – Genre Challenges. New media, new boundaries, new formations

Special theme. Editors: Anne Jerslev (guest), Mette Mortensen, Line Nybro Petersen

Submission deadline: February 1, 2011
Publication date: Fall 2011

Today’s intensified blurring of boundaries between media, and between media and their audiences is challenging our traditional understanding of genre. New genres surface at the same rapid pace as old ones are contested or simply deemed out of date. Even though terms such as genre hybridity and cross genres have pointed to generic instabilities and experiments for a couple of decades now, the altered modes of media production and distribution raise a number of topical questions: How might we understand genre today? In which ways might genre be a productive term for conceptualising and comprehending the new digital media landscape? And not least, do we need to change our notions of traditional genre expressions, for example in film and television?

While the scholarly literature on genre is substantial in film studies, television studies and literary studies, the concept of genre remains largely underdeveloped theoretically as well as methodologically in our present era of digital transformation. Genre has traditionally been defined as a horizon of expectations and a contractual relationship between audiences and media formats. However, this definition hardly seems adequate in relation to contemporary media characterised, on the one hand, by new genres constantly emerging and evolving, and, on the other hand, by persistent renegotiations of the relationship between author, audience and media product.

This special issue of MedieKultur consequently sets out to rethink genre across a wide range of media offerings, including, but not limited to, online social media, television entertainment and news, film and film culture and video games. We thus invite contributions on:

• Media convergence and genre
• Genre, interaction, participatory practices and aesthetics
• Genre and digitalisation
• Genre and media production
• Genre and audiences
• Conceptualising genre – now and then

Link til MedieKultur