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Colleagues are invited for Dr Tim Markham's seminar on ‘Social Media, Protest Cultures and Political Imaginaries’ on 8 October, the first in a series of seminars organised by the University of Leicester Department of Media and Communication. It will run from 4:00-5:30pm in the Bankfield House Seminar Room on 132 New Walk, Leicester and a drinks reception will be provided at 5:30. Booking is not necessary, all are welcome. For more information please see the abstract below, or contact Jonathan Ong ([log in to unmask]). Abstract This session tackles the tendency in much of the academic literature to think about new protest cultures, especially in social media, in vitalist or ecological terms. In much the same way as Judith Butler’s performativity, the idea of social and political imaginaries has morphed from its original conception outlined by Charles Taylor to come to be defined negatively: there is a resistance to being prescriptive about new forms of political subjectivity, and instead spaces or sites of protean transformativity are identified and defended as though they were fragile life forms. But while social media might be experienced as immersive, serendipitous or ambient, it does not follow that they provide a blank canvas on which more authentic or pure cultures of protest will appear. Looked at phenomenologically, social media can be understood using the same terms as other media – thrownness, at-handness – terms which suggest that individualism and collectivism have not been superseded and that institutions still matter. Speaker's Bio Tim Markham is Reader in Journalism and Media at Birkbeck, University of London. He is author ofThe Politics of War Reporting: Authority, Authenticity and Morality (2011, Manchester University Press) and co-author of Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (2007, Palgrave Macmillan). Other works focus on citizen journalism, celebrity culture and journalism in the Arab world. Best, Jonathan ===== Jonathan Corpus Ong, PhD Department of Media & Communication University of Leicester Room 203 Bankfield House 132 New Walk Leicester LE1 7JA United Kingdom Tel: +44 7460440907 Email: [log in to unmask] Webpage: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/media/people/jonathan-ong-profile Twitter: @jonathan_c_ong NEW ESRC-FUNDED PROJECT: Humanitarian Technologies Project- Communications in the Wake of Haiyan Link: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/ES.M001288.1/read -------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA mailing list -------------------------------------------------------- To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1 ------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education. This mailing list is a free service and is not restricted to members. It is an unmoderated list and content reflect the views of those who post to the list and not of MeCCSA as an organisation. MeCCSA recommends that the list be used only for posting of information (for example about events, publications, conferences, lectures) of interest to members or to promote discussion of current issues of wide general interest in the field. Posts to the MeCCSA mailing list are public, indexed by Google, and can be accessed from the JISCMail website (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/meccsa.html). Any messages posted to the list are subject to the JISCMail acceptable use policy, which states that users should avoid engaging in unreasonable behaviour, or disrupting the general flow of discussion on a list. For further information, please visit: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/ --------------------------------------------------------