DIGITAL LANDSCAPES:
MEDIA TRANSFORMATIONS IN IRELAND

A symposium on the challenges and changes affecting Ireland's media and
cultural industries jointly hosted by the School of Media, Dublin 
Institute of Technology and COMTEC, Dublin City University.

April 27/28,  2001

CALL FOR PAPERS

The diffusion of digital technologies in Ireland allows communication
between people nationally and globally to develop in ways that 
were completely unforeseen a decade ago.   Internet access grows 
rapidly. Digital television providers are already converging onto one 
screen the information-seeking pleasures of the Internet and the 
entertainment pleasures of TV, while popular use of the Internet 
migrates from the PC to the mobile phone.  The digitisation of media 
has far reaching consequences beyond the issues of technological change 
and is already having significant demonstrable effects on the 
production, regulation and consumption of media culture in Ireland.

The aim of this one-day symposium is to explore the challenges and 
changes facing Ireland's media and the implications such a 
transformation will have on the technological, economic, occupational, 
spatial and cultural features of the Irish media landscape.  How do we 
assess the impact of new media on established media?  What relations 
between them are forming in the different media sectors?  What are the 
main influences shaping media convergence? What new social relations 
are facilitated through interactive media?  Papers are invited that 
address some of the following issues:

-          Digital landscapes: what are the processes of transformation
underway in Irish media?  How has the Web changed conceptions of media
space? What structural impacts have been felt in media organisations in
Ireland?
-          What has been the effect of technological change on 
processes of production and conditions of working in the newspaper 
industry, in radio and television?  What new content will be generated 
by new media?  How will new forms of distribution impact on different 
sectors?  What role can Irish media play in a global media environment?
-          What is the future for models of public service broadcasting 
in a digital media landscape?   Cultural politics in the new media 
environment: what regulatory and policy trends are emerging?
-          What kinds of new business models and forms of media 
organisation are emerging in the communication sector internationally 
and how relevant are they for Irish conditions?
-          The social impact of new media: what are the implications 
of digital media for community, for social inclusion, for democracy, 
nation building etc.
-          What do new media mean to Irish audiences? What new patterns 
of cultural consumption have emerged in the digital media landscape? 
How have Irish media responded to new approaches to culture, 
subjectivity and identity?
-          New media, new methodologies:  what are the challenges to 
media and communications scholarship posed by the new digital 
landscapes?


Abstracts (250 words) should be submitted to the organisers by December
15th,  2000 and completed papers by March 30th, 2001.  It is envisaged 
that a selection of the best papers will be subsequently published in a 
special volume based on the themes of the Digital Landscapes symposium.

For further information and for submissions, please contact:
1.       Professor Farrel Corcoran, School of Communications, Dublin 
City University, Dublin 9. Telephone: (01) 7005219.  Email:
[log in to unmask] 2.       Dr. Brian O'Neill, Faculty of Applied 
Arts,  Dublin Institute of Technology, Rathmines Road, Dublin 6.  
Telephone: (01) 4023482. Email: [log in to unmask]







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