Dear All,
attached below, information about a Postgraduate conference that will be
held in Leeds in May 2007.

For further information please contact directly

- Qian (Sarah) Gong - [log in to unmask]
- Anna Zoellner - [log in to unmask]

Best,

Salvo


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Date:   	Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:35:31 -0000
From:  	Katharine Sarikakis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: ICS CONFERENCE: CfP: Communication Technologies of Empowerment

 

Call for Papers
ICS Postgraduate Conference:
Communication Technologies of Empowerment

Leeds, England, May 18, 2007

The Institute of Communications Studies (ICS) at the University of Leeds
will be hosting a postgraduate conference for the presentation and
discussion of research in communications performed by PhD students.
Under the title "Communication Technologies of Empowerment", this
meeting seeks to bring together new scholars who are studying the ways
in which the latest developments in communication are affecting our
democracies, by enabling new forms of political participation and
citizen engagement.

Whether you live in an established democratic system, a country in
transition to democracy, or under an authoritarian government, new
communication technologies are likely to have changed your political
environment. The recent popular upheavals in Ukraine and Lebanon were in
great part conducted through mobile phone messages. In Western Europe,
the riots in the Parisian suburbs and the protests in Spain against the
Aznar government regarding the authorship of the Madrid terrorist
attacks would have been very different if the Internet and mobile phones
had not become an integral part of our everyday lives.

Meanwhile, traditional politics is trying to catch up with the digital
age.
Political parties are seeking to domesticate these new forms of
horizontal communication, and so are governments, with potentially
threatening consequences. Paradoxically, new technologies of
communication can serve both to empower citizens and to survey and
control them. A recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace has shown that networked technologies can be
effectively used by authoritarian governments to strengthen their
repressive regimes.

New forms of communication have become a key tool for global social
movements.
Whether their struggles are focused on questions of global justice,
class, gender, race or the environment, activists have found in the
decentralized and inexpensive nature of the Internet and mobile
telephony the media they needed to organise themselves and make their
actions public. Interestingly, these technologies are also being
mastered by those actors who want to challenge the national and
international orders through violent means. This reminds us that
terrorism is in great part a communicative phenomenon, today more than
ever before.

If your research deals with questions such as the ones outlined above,
or with issues related with the interplay of media, new technologies,
citizenship, democracy and politics, we hope to hear from you. Please
submit an abstract with a general description of your research paper,
indicating your topic, theoretical framework, research questions or
hypotheses, method and expected results. The abstract should not exceed
500 words. If your proposal is accepted, we will ask you to provide a
full paper. After your presentation, the paper will be published on the
ICS website.

Please, remember to include your full contact information: Name, e-mail
and postal address, telephone number and academic affiliation for each
author.

Your paper presentation will be discussed and commented on by members of
the academic staff from the Institute of Communications Studies who have
expertise in your topic, method, or theoretical framework. This can be a
golden opportunity for you to refine your thoughts, openly share your
concerns, and receive constructive criticism from professors and fellow
postgraduate students working in your area. It is also a great chance to
start building or expanding your professional and academic network.

Deadlines:
- Deadline for proposals: January 31, 2007.
- Deadline for full papers: April 30, 2007.

Contact and electronic submission:
- Qian (Sarah) Gong - [log in to unmask]
- Anna Zoellner - [log in to unmask]

Conference website: http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~icsfs



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-- 
Salvatore Scifo
Communications,
MeCCSA Postgraduate Network


Communication and Media Research Institute
School of Media, Arts & Design
University of Westminster
Watford Road, Northwick Park
Harrow
HA1 3TP


MeCCSA Postgraduate Network
http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/