CFP: Protest Participation in Variable Communication Ecologies:
Meanings, Modalities and Implications
24-26 June 2014
24-26 June 2014
Sardinia, Italy
http://protestcommunicationecologies.com/
http://protestcommunicationecologies.com/
Contemporary collective action, social movements, civic and political protests are characterized by a growing complexity of actors, contents, repertories, contexts, and effects. Grappling with the implications of late modernity, scholars worldwide have reflected on the cross-fertilization of individual practices and collective mobilizations. They have foregrounded unconventional forms of engagement, through reflexive, expressive and embodied acts of dissent cutting across the cultural, political, and social domains, in persistent as well as increasingly transient modes of organisation and belonging. Within this field, some accounts graft social media as an independent variable that would mitigate the democratic deficits of mass-mediated and institutionalised politics. Others would warn of the power imbalances and the inequalities in participation particularly social media reinforce or heighten.
Keynote speakers
Lance Bennett (University of Washington, USA)
Natalie Fenton (Goldsmith College, University of London, UK)
Zizi Papacharissi (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)
Bev Skeggs (Goldsmith College, University of London, UK)
Seeking to kindle an imagination that situates social media in lived experience and practice, this conference intends to unpick the history and the present of linkages but also of any signs of a conscious uncoupling of network technologies, broadcasting media and physical places where protest participation is enacted. In doing so, we aim to tackle the significant challenges posed to democratic politics, social theory and research by resultant variable communication ecologies.
The organizers invite theoretical reflections and empirical analyses tracking continuities and changes in protest participation arising in the blurred lines between social media, broadcasting media and physical places. In particular, the conference welcomes contributions that address the following questions:
- What forms of civic/uncivic protest participation are (de)activated in contemporary communication ecologies?
- What are the effects of these different forms of participation on institutional politics, political culture, civic education, collective identities and the media?
- Which structural - both societal and technological - elements of contemporary communication ecologies enable, accentuate or discourage protest participation?
- Which type of content converges and is hybridized in the practices of protest participants, of protest-covering media or of the organizations that are targets of protest?
- Which forms of exclusion are being overcome or heightened in the communication ecologies where protest participation is instantiated?
- What are the conceptual challenges ahead of us? As we query communication ecologies, do concepts old and new, e.g. "mediatization", "convergence", "remediation", "boundary publics", "connective action" continue to be analytically informing for mapping the nature and meaning of participation in protest as well as in the civic life beyond it?
- Which methodological obstacles arise for research oriented towards analysing protest participation in variable communication ecologies? And how do we overcome them?
Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis by the scientific committee. The final deadline for submission is 30th January 2015. Without compromising scientific standards, the Conference aims for a wide geographical representation of scientists. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out at the earliest opportunity and no later than March 2015.
Following the conference, participants will be invited to submit their papers for consideration by the journal iCS - Information, Communication & Society which will dedicate a special issue to the conference proceedings. At that time, contributions will also be invited to an edited collection.
