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Dear All,
apologies for sending another email through the mailing list, but I was just alerted to the fact that attachments weren't delivered. Therefore, please find the details of the CfP below.
Call for Papers
New Directions in Media and Sociology Research (NDiMS)
2018 Conference
Wednesday, September 19th, 2018
School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, UK
‘Digital Lives and Alternative Politics’
Keynote Speakers: Dr Lina Dencik and Prof Natalie Fenton
You are warmly invited to submit an abstract for the upcoming New Directions in Media and Sociology 2018 conference (NDiMS) that will be held on 19 September 2018, run by Postgraduate Researchers in the School of Media, Communication and Sociology in the University of Leicester.
The theme for this year’s one-day conference is ‘Digital Lives and Alternative Politics’, provoking reflections how the digital shapes both mainstream and alternative political spaces and movements.
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and as Instagram and WhatsApp bombard users with their new (?) data policy act, we invite you to ‘log out’ for a while and to examine the place and opportunities for a new politics in our contemporary times.
The social networking sites we once thought ‘just’ gave out your data to greedy advertisers have been revealed as a piece of the broader puzzle that combining far-right politics and billionaires with hoodies.
In the post-truth era and in the era of tl;dr* (‘too long didn’t read’) what is the status of ethical journalism, where xenophobic presidents tweeted their own news without filters, and where memes can be considered as an act of deconstructing and resisting prominent political figures?
And following the #metoo or the #blacklivesmatter campaigns we cannot stop at asking whether systemic violence has magically eradicated but rather, we must dig deeper into the merging of online/offline struggles and the specific characteristics of the collaborations it creates, their limitations and the means. Digital or not, mainstream or niche, we would like to question how has this resistance has taken place and what is next to come?
In this conference, we seek answers to this main question: Is it time that alternative/counter media became more popular and more confrontational reaching outside their usual pool of ‘activist members’?
We would like to invite contributions that touch on the following topics, but are not limited to them:
Online/offline surveillance and the developing alternatives for resistance
Political Communication and internet literacy
Independent/ investigative journalism and commercialization of information
Minority populations in the web – representation and fighting back
New generations and counter/alternative politics
Class and identity politics in emergent online movements
We welcome single or co-authored articles and would like to encourage submissions from PhD students, independent researchers as well as Artists and Activists. Please submit your abstract of 250 words as either a Word document or PDF to [log in to unmask]by May 31st 2018. We may be able to accommodate a small number of online presentations: please enquire early if you are interested.
Important dates:
Submission deadline: (Extended deadline) June 15th2018
Notification of abstract accepted: July 2nd 2018
Costs:The conference fee is £10. This is a contribution in solidarity with those attendees who do not have PhD-funding that covers travel costs. These attendees can contact us for additional travel funding. There is a cap of £ 75,- and is based upon a first come first serve, needs-based policy.
We very much look forward to reading your abstracts!