MEDIATIZED WORLDS: 
CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN A MEDIA AGE

Thursday, 14th April 2011 - Friday, 15th April 2011,
University of Bremen, Haus der Wissenschaft

-- Call for Papers --

In the present age, people's lives and experiences take place in ‘mediatized worlds’: Our work is increasingly work on and with computers, what we know about politics is mediated and, hence, staged by technical media, we spend our spare time watching television and playing computer games, but also these days education and religion cannot be thought of beyond technical media. Mediatization as a concept tries to describe this increasing media saturation of the present on a meta level. The dispersal of media in very different social and cultural fields cannot be comprehended as a neutral act. As media change the way we communicate, an increasing mediatization is interwoven with a changing social process of constructing the world. However, mediatization has to be grasped as a contradictory process. There is no single ‘media logic’ impacting everyone and everything in the same way. Different media offer various influences, which become concrete in specific ways, depending on the social field that is mediatized. There is no ‘one homogenous mediatized world’ but various moments of mediatization working differently depending on their context in lifeworlds: The mediatization of politics might follow a different trajectory to the mediatization of education, work, religion or leisure time.

Invited keynote speakers:

- Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths College University of London, UK
- Stig Hjarvard, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Hubert Knoblauch, TU Berlin, Germany
- Lynn Spigel, Northwestern University, USA
- John B. Thompson, University of Cambridge, UK

The aim of the international conference is to discuss this ongoing mediatization of present social and cultural fields. Papers -- both theoretically oriented and/or empirically grounded -- are invited on the theme of mediatization.

Topics might include:

- Defining and theorising ‘mediatized worlds’,
- Approaching media change in the context of social and cultural change,
- Empirical studies on mediatization in relation to different social and cultural fields
- Methods and approaches of mediatization research,
- Exploring processes of mediatisation in a historical perspective
- Studies concerning the relation between technical developments and social and cultural changes
- Studies on the relation between mediatization and other long term meta-processes like globalization, individualization, commercialization

The conference is the international start conference of the six-year DFG priority research program “Mediatized Worlds: Communication in the media and social change”. For further information on this program and the conference please visit the program’s homepage http://www.mediatizedworlds.net.

We encourage contributions on mediatization from different academic perspectives. Please send your abstracts (not more than 400 words) by Saturday 15th January 2011 to:

  Prof. Dr. Friedrich Krotz
  University of Bremen
  IMKI, Institute for Media, Communication & Information
  Enrique-Schmidt-Strasse 7
  D-28359 Bremen, Germany

  Phone: +49 (0)421 218-67625
  E-Mail: [log in to unmask]

--
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp
University of Bremen - FB 9
IMKI, Institute of Media, Communication & Information
IPKM, Institute of Media History, Media and Communication Studies
Enrique-Schmidt-Strasse 7
D-28359 Bremen, Germany

Phone:   +49 (0)421 218-67620

http://www.imki.uni-bremen.de
http://www.ipkm.uni-bremen.de

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