CAMRI | Calendar

Reframing Media/Cultural Studies in the Age of Global Crisis @ University of Westminster

May 19 @ 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

Conference organised by the Communication and Media Research Institute, CAMRI, University of Westminster in association with Fluminense Federal University, Brazil

In an age of ongoing global protest, an economy in crisis and systems of governance and democracy in question, a re-assessment of the disciplines of media and cultural studies is called for. Traditional paradigms for conceptualising the media are further challenged by shifts in the media environment resulting from the growth of digital and mobile media. This is a defining moment for the field and a time for reflection and re-evaluation.

The production of academic knowledge and the development of fields of enquiry into the media, culture and society have always been linked to both intellectual formations within the academe and historical events taking place outside it. Critical theory and much later cultural studies and media studies were not only a reaction to the pathologies of modern times, but played an active role in naming and identifying them, thus serving as the harbingers of changing times. Conceptual and methodological frameworks used within these disciplines have also changed through time as international scholars attempted to grasp broader shifts in historical, cultural and social processes, showing that the analysis of media in different parts of the world may require different frameworks.

This conference thus invites us to reframe and rethink media/cultural studies in light of recent waves of global crises and new media developments. As such, it offers a space that transcends false binaries – between cultural studies and political economy, or new and old media, or global north and south – allowing us to reflect on the concepts and methods that can help us address the important issues of our time.

Some of the questions we will be considering include:

What are the questions that media studies and cultural studies should be asking to respond to a world in crisis?
What are the new concepts, theories and methodologies emerging from the field’s response to current challenges?
How have global protests and people’s everyday responses to a world in crisis challenged current theories and methodologies in media and cultural studies?
How have changes in media technologies altered the questions that media and cultural studies scholars are asking or the methodologies that they use? What is it that remains the same?
How are developments in media/cultural research and theorising around the world enriching and challenging the field?

The conference will be organised around four key themes, each headed by a plenary discussion:

Panel 1: Reframing Media Studies/Cultural Studies in the Age of Global Crisis: What are the questions?

Plenary Discussion 1:
Paddy Scannell, Dave Morley, Annabelle Sreberny, David Gauntlett

Panel 2: Global Crisis and Media Theory

Plenary Discussion 2:
Paolo Gerbaudo, Anastasia Kavada, Jeremy Gilbert, Colin Sparks

Panel 3: Rethinking Internationalising Media Studies/Cultural Studies

Plenary Discussion 3:
Daya Thussu, Fernando Resende, Jaeho Kang, Tarik Sabry

Panel 4: New/Old Theory in Media Studies/Cultural Studies

Plenary Discussion 4:
Joanna Zylinska, Christian Fuchs and Kaarle Nordenstreng

Programme and registration

This two-day conference will take place on Friday 19 and Saturday 20 June 2015.

The fee for registration (which applies to all participants, including presenters) is £199 standard. The special rate for students is £99. Registration fees cover all conference documentation, refreshments, lunches, wine reception and administration costs.

Registration is open until Thursday 11 June 2015.

Please download the registration form and send it to Helen Cohen h.cohen02@westminster.ac.uk.

Download the draft schedule.

Categories: Conferences

Jun

Thu

Media, power and plurality: old problems, new policies @ University of Westminster (Marylebone)

Tickets

Jun 11 @ 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm

Democratic governments throughout the world aspire to plurality and diversity of voice as a policy goal which is fundamental to a healthy democracy. Over the last 20 years, however, economics, technology, political ideology and global corporate power have often conspired to frustrate those normative aims. More recently, different plurality problems have been prompted by access issues and the burgeoning reach and power of digital intermediaries such as Google, Facebook and Amazon.

This seminar marks the publication of a new edited collection featuring a number of international scholars. It takes place in the aftermath of a UK election in which media plurality was an explicit election issue, and whose outcome some commentators believe was heavily influenced by political campaigning in the traditional press. The seminar will discuss some of the policy issues around media plurality and media ownership in the UK and Europe, to what extent new policy thinking and ideas might be politically feasible, and whether such initiatives are applicable across different nation states.

3.30–3.55pm – Refreshments and registration

3.55pm – Introduction and welcome: Prof Steven Barnett, University of Westminster

4pm – Keynote: Prof Des Freedman, Goldsmiths College, University of London

4.15pm – Brief presentations from (provisional list):

Prof Lorna Woods, University of Essex
Dr Judith Townend, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Prof Raymond Kuhn, Queen Mary, University of London
Dr Martin Moore, Media Standards Trust

5pm – Plenary discussion

6.30pm – Drinks

7.30pm – Ends.

Registration is free. Registration closes on Tuesday 9 June 2015.

Please register here.

Categories: Conferences

Sep

Fri

Comparing Children’s Media Around the World: Policies, Texts and Audiences @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Sep 4 @ 9:00 am – 7:00 pm

Date:	04 September 2015
Time:	9:00am to 7:00pm

Conference organised by the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, with support from the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

Date: Friday 4 September 2015
Venue: University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

Preceded on Thursday 3 September by:

Full-day workshop (9.30am–5pm) on ‘Accessing, Capturing and Interpreting Young People’s Voices’ in association with the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) Temporary Working Group on Children, Youth and Media
Evening event on children’s media policy in association with the Children’s Media Foundation and Voice of the Listener & Viewer

Conference themes and questions

Where in the world are children best served by media available to them, and who judges the meaning of ‘best’? It is now 20 years since advocates from around the world agreed the first Children’s Television Charter calling for adequately funded, well produced content that both affirms children’s sense of self, community and place and promotes their appreciation of other cultures. In today’s multiplatform environment, where children’s use of individualised social media challenges the status of professional players, and the expansion of US and other transnational networks fuels concerns about the viability of domestic production, the same calls for quality, representation and diversity persist. That much was clear at the 7th World Summit on Media for Children in Malaysia in 2014.

Yet opinions divide over the levels of regulation and intervention required to improve media provision for children, and over the most urgently needed improvements, such as reducing access to harmful content or ensuring that public policy and discourse are informed by ample and rigorous research.

Meanwhile, researching children’s media use remains challenging and, like local media production for children, costs more than some industry players are ready to afford. Children often know how to navigate into unregulated transnational media arenas, accessing horror movies and graphic reporting of wars and catastrophes, with or without dubbing or subtitling. Can analysts hope to conduct a child-informed and child-centred analysis that grasps the multiplicity of children’s everyday media practices?

This one-day conference seeks to take a fully international approach to all forms of children’s media irrespective of delivery platform. It includes a keynote address by Professor David Buckingham as well as the first results from an AHRC-funded project on ‘Orientations in the Development of Pan-Arab television for Children’.

Panel themes Include:

Policy and regulation of children’s media
Socialisation through social and mobile media
Generations and memories
Researching child audiences
Public service and educational media for children
Media and children’s rights
Children as producers and performers
Children’s engagements with digital spaces and platforms
Local television, local adaptations and quality
Branding, marketing and advertising to children
Representation and media literacy
Young children and digital media
The Prix Jeunesse Suitcase

Programme and registration

This is a one-day conference, taking place on Friday, 4 September 2015. It will include a keynote address, plenary sessions and parallel workshops. The fee for registration for all participants, including presenters, is £50, to cover conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs. Participants fund their own travel and accommodation expenses.

There is a separate registration fee of £25 to attend the ECREA TWG Children, Youth and Media workshop on Accessing, Capturing and Interpreting Young People’s Voices on 3 September.

The evening event “Staring into the abyss: Where will children’s TV be in 10 years’ time?” being held in association with the Children’s Media Foundation and Voice of the Listener & Viewer on 3 September is free but you must indicate your attendance on the registration form.

Registration closes Wednesday 26 August 2015

Categories: Conferences

Oct

Sat

Profiles of Black British Music 2015 @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Oct 31 @ 10:00 am – 6:30 pm

Profiles of Black British Music is an annual seminar held by the Black Music Research Unit (BMRU). It provides a platform for sharing information on or relating to black British music over the last 12 months.

The seminar is part of the BMRU’s annual series of events supporting academic research, community events and the profiling of black music in Britain. It is definitely worth attending if you’re looking at funding, networking and opportunities to profile within this sector. Themes will include but are not limited to papers and presentations on:

Publishing
Copyright
Marketing & promotion
Festivals
Cultural & tourism
Heritage
Exhibitions
Fashion
Community workshops
Music education

The event pays tribute to Rico Rodriguez and his contribution to popular music in Britain. In support, the PRS for Music Foundation and FORM Music will speak on the work being done by the PRS benevolent fund to support musicians in times of difficulty.

The BMRU is an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners providing a mix of academic and industry expertise. Its focus is the largely undocumented musical experience of black and minority ethnic communities in the UK.

Categories: Conferences

Nov

Sat

African Film and Social Change – 7 and 8 November 2015 @ University of Westminster (Marylebone)

Tickets

Nov 7 @ 10:00 am – Nov 8 @ 6:00 pm

A conference organised by the Africa Media Centre, University of Westminster. Supported by the Royal African Society’s FILM AFRICA.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Saturday 7 November

Newton I Aduaka

Newton I. Aduaka is a Nigerian-born filmmaker based in Paris. He started his film career in the UK in the 1990s. Aduaka’s first feature, the award-winning Rage (2000) was the UK’s first film by an independent black filmmaker to be released on the national circuit. Aduaka has screened his films at film festivals around the world. He has won numerous awards, among them the award for best film at Fespaco 2007 for his second feature, Ezra, the first film to give an African perspective on the disturbing phenomenon of child soldiers in the continent’s recent civil wars. Aduaka won the FIPRESCI International Critics Award for his third, One Man’s Show at FESPACO 2013. His fourth feature Oil on Water (currently in development) was selected to be part of the Cinéfondation’s Atelier at Cannes in 2014..

Confirmed keynote speaker: Sunday 8 November

Tunde Kelani (TK) is a Nigerian filmmaker, storyteller, director, cinematographer and producer. After graduating from the London International Film School he returned to Nigeria to work first as a cinematographer. In a career spanning more than four decades TK has specialised in producing and directing movies that promote Nigeria’s rich cultural heritage and are rooted in documentation, archiving, education, entertainment and promotion of the culture. His latest film Dazzling Mirage tells the story of a talented young woman living with Sickle Cell disease who overcomes social stigma and prejudice to achieve her dreams.

African film conference poster

Conference Theme

This 7th African Film Conference, organised by the Africa Media Centre and supported by the Royal African Society’s FILM AFRICA, will bring together academic scholars and practitioners to discuss how policymakers, filmmakers, and audiences are implicated in changing social relations, affecting the kinds of moving images they can make or want to be made. Key questions relate to how film screen cultures in Africa have advanced or subverted social change in Africa. We are concerned to bring to the fore sub-themes of changing film production environments, shifts in funding mechanisms for African film, the role of audiences/users, regulation debates and African film’s potential for human development.

African film and related screen cultures have grown rapidly across the continent and are increasingly implicated in both directed and non-directed social change. Surprisingly, film’s significant role in social change processes in Africa is hugely understated. Not only are film and videos a source of daily entertainment for many in Africa, they also affect and reflect ongoing struggles for social justice, social activism, civic engagement, civic dialogue, community building, social capital, community development and cultural vitality.

Films made by African directors such as the Oscar nominated Timbuktu seem to provide an alternative to the Western media’s perspective on how terrorism affects the lives of ordinary people in some countries in Africa, as part of a new trend. New and old African film and screen cultures are increasingly important for public and private life on the continent and yet this has not been sufficiently reflected in academic work. Specific films have raised awareness and understanding and enhanced civic participation and contributed to social change. Arguably, the new ICTs and social media environments are making moving images in Africa more effective. Evolving policies, attitudes and use patterns of screen cultures in Africa have potential for increased access, participation and empowerment.

Confirmed academics and practitioners from countries including Nigeria, Rwanda, Ghana, South Africa, UK and North America will address these and similar issues relating to film, screen cultures and social change in Africa:

Theoretical Issues on Screen Cultures and Social Change
Citizen empowerment and film in Africa
Film Music and Social Change in Africa
The effectiveness of Comedy and Satire in promoting change
African Film in the era of digital platforms
Human development and Film in Africa
Film and politics, persuasion and electioneering
Film and Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Africa
Health Communication and Film in Africa
Old Media and New Film Practices in Africa
Gender Politics in African Film
Regulation of Film in Africa
Resistance, Activism and Film Cultures in Africa
Film Practices and Non-Governmental Organisations in Africa
Film and Television Education in the Digital Age
From Audiences to Consumer-content Producers
Mobile Film Practices in Africa

Programme and Registration

This two day conference will take place on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2015. The fee for registration for all participants, including presenters, is £150, with a concessionary rate of £75 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs. Registration will close on 5 November 2015.

Online registration

Categories: Conferences Films

Nov

Sat

The Ultimate Seminar 2015 @ University of Westminster (Little Titchfield)

Tickets

Nov 21 @ 9:00 am – 7:30 pm

The Ultimate Seminar returns on Saturday 21 November with its annual round-up of insider knowledge for making it in the music industry. Now in its sixth year, the event will have representatives from the industry’s foremost record labels, A&Rs, music publishers, management teams and songwriters assembled for one day to share their music-business acumen in a comprehensive programme packed with industry insight.

The Ultimate Seminar, presented by Cre8ing Vision Ltd. in association with the University of Westminster, will present panel discussions chaired by industry leaders that will cover a range of topics, including inspiration, creative breakthrough and business know-how. Speakers will include:

Jo Charrington, A&R (Capitol Records) for Grammy Award-winning singer Sam Smith
Denzyl Feigelson, Apple iTunes Music Synergist and Live Events & Artist Relations
Diztortion, chart-topping grime music and electro producer
Glyn Aikins, Director of A&R at Virgin EMI Records UK who has developed the likes of Emeli Sandé, Naughty Boy and Krept & Konan
Mark Williamson of Spotify

Panel chairs will include:

PRS’ Membership Development Director Myles Keller
BBC Radio presenter Nihal Arthanayake
i-D Magazine Music Editor Hattie Collins
BMI label boss Simon Aldridge
Capital Xtra DJ Manny Norte.

Attendees will have an unparalleled opportunity to pose questions to panellists, see inspirational film screenings and take away valuable advice to help them in creating a successful careers in music.

You must register to attend. Please register here.

Categories: Conferences

Apr

Fri

Towards a Sociology of Popular Music in the Arab Region @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Apr 8 @ 9:00 am – 9:00 pm

Conference organised by the Arab Media Centre, Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI)

Keynote Speaker: Thomas Burkhalter

The compendium of research into Arab popular music and music in the Arab region, in general, remains very modest. While Arabic literature on the topic is skewed towards historiographical and micro-sociological studies of folkloric musical traditions, recent scholarship emerging from Western academia is more in synch with the present tense of Arab popular cultures, focusing largely on current, avant-garde and emerging musical trends in the region. The result is a polarised and fragmented field of research that lacks coherence and systematicity. There is as yet no sociology of Arab popular music, nor is there evidence of an overall critical framework that lends itself to a conjunctional critique.

Movements of people and tunes across areas of conflict within the Arab region and out to different diasporic locations have brought awareness of new musical and creative energies, which demand our attention as academics. Musicians in the Arab region and in the diaspora are making use of musical and digital technologies to produce, collaborate, and distribute new sounds in response to a new era. They are generating new aesthetics by blending different genres, reconstructing old repertoires, and reclaiming minority music heritage. Furthermore, the over-commercialisation and lack of a legal framework to protect creativity raises important and key political economy questions about the Arab music industry, which have yet to be studied in a systematic way.

The Arab Media Centre’s 11th annual international conference welcomes: academics musicians, music industry and non-commercial music organisations to engage in dialogue about the present concerns (cultural, aesthetic, economic, political) of music in the Arab region. Contributors will be invited to engage with one of the following themes:

Theories of popular music: towards a critical analysis of Arab popular music
The political economy of music in the Arab region
Histories of popular music in the Arab region
Performing and making music in the time of revolutions
Music as ethnography
Migration and music
Arab diasporic music and new hybridised genres
Music as resistance
Music as politics
Music and subcultures in the Arab region
Music and celebrity cultures
Music audiences in the Arab region
Music as memory
Transcendental and experimental music in the Arab region

Programme and registration

This one-day conference, taking place on Friday 8 April 2016, will include a keynote address, plenary sessions and live music performances. The fee for registration for all participants, including presenters, will be £120, with a concessionary rate of £60 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs.

See the draft programme.

If you have any questions, please contact har-events@westminster.ac.uk.

Travel expenses

Participants fund their own travel and accommodation expenses.

Publication

There will be various openings for publication, including an edited collection and a themed issue of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. Publication will be discussed further after the conference.

Categories: Conferences

Apr

Sat

China and the Changing Geopolitics of Global Communication @ University of Westminster (Marylebone)

Tickets

Apr 9 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

The conference assesses the impact of the peaceful rise of China and poses questions about its effect on global communication.

This pioneering conference assesses the impact of the peaceful rise of China in its geopolitical environment and China’s effect on global communication. It examines how Sino-globalisation is contributing to enriching the political, cultural and economic conversations globally, while recognising the limitations of a media system that operates within a one-party state. Will the growing globalisation of China help redress the imbalance in media flows and contribute to a more pluralistic media globe?

The conference is organised by the China Media Centre at University of Westminster in collaboration with Managing Department of Social Sciences and Faculty of International Media at Communication University of China.

Featured speakers

Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau China Institute and Professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College London.
Jiang Fei, Professor, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Daya Thussu, Professor of International Communication, University of Westminster
Qin Yuming, Professor, Communication University of China
Frank Pieke, Professor, Modern China Studies, University of Leiden, Netherlands
Duan Peng, Professor, Communication University of China
Luo Qing, Professor, Communication University of China
Hugo de Burgh, Director, China Media Centre, University of Westminster

Topics for abstracts

Abstracts have been collected covering a wide range of topics within the field of global communication, such as:

China’s media in Africa
The soft power of culture
Constructive vs critical journalism
Internet governance
Building communication infrastructure
Cyber-capitalism with Chinese characteristics
Diaspora and geopolitics
China and development communication
BRICS and global communication
Contesting news agendas
Cyber war and security

Publication

A selection of the papers will be published in Global Media and China – a newly launched SAGE journal, which will dedicate a 2017 special issue to the conference theme.

Registration

Attendance for University of Westminster staff and students is free.

The fee for registration for external participants including presenters, is £100 (£50 concessionary rate for external students) and is charged to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs.

Further details

Download the conference handbook

For further details about the event, contact Alja Kranjec at a.kranjec@westminster.ac.uk or Xiao Han at kilou_123@me.com.

Categories: China Media Centre Conferences

May

Wed

Media Engagement: Connecting Production, Texts and Audiences International Symposium @ University of Westminster (Boardroom)

Tickets

May 4 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

The symposium is hosted by the University of Westminster in association with Lund University, and the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.

Preceded by the CAMRI Seminar: Media Industries and Engagement, Tuesday 3 May 2016, 5pm-7pm.

The symposium is hosted by the University of Westminster in association with Lund University, and the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.

How do people engage with media, such as television drama, twitter feeds, or reality entertainment? Media engagement is a broad term for research into how we experience media content, artefacts and events, from our experience of live performances, to social media engagement, or participation in media itself. Media engagement offers a rich site of analysis for exploring the dispersed connections across industry contexts, cultural forms, and audience experiences.

This symposium provides a platform for research on new terms of media engagement. We want to understand industrial contexts for engagement, including performance metrics, production practices and policy discourses. And we want to understand people’s shifting and subjective relations with media as live audiences, catch up viewers, illegal users, as consumers and users, fans and anti-fans, contestants and participants. Media engagement thus encapsulates research on audiences, fans or producer-users, and the ways these different groups co-exist with those making content and driving policy and politics. The aim of the symposium is to investigate how industrial contexts, producers and audiences co-create, shape and limit experiences within emerging mediascapes.

We welcome research that relates to the following areas of enquiry for media engagement:

Industrial contexts for engagement: production practices, policy discourses and stakeholder coalitions
Empirical production and audience research: quantitative and qualitative methods and practices
Audience experiences and engagement: affect, emotion and passion
Fans and anti-fans: labour and fan practices
Unmeasured audience: informal media economies and illegal practices

The conference includes a combination of invited speakers and open panels. Confirmed speakers include Professor Göran Bolin (Södertörn University, Sweden), Professor Raymond Boyle (Glasgow University, UK), Professor John Corner (Leeds University, UK), Professor Annette Hill (Lund University, Sweden), Professor Jeanette Steemers (University of Westminster, UK), Dr Paul Torre (University of Northern Iowa, USA), and Professor Anne Marit Waade (Aarhus University, Denmark). The symposium is connected with the Media Experiences project, a production and audience study of television drama, documentary and reality entertainment based at Lund University, in collaboration with Endemol Shine Group, and funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.

Please submit abstracts of 300 words in English by 23rd March 2016 to Jose Luis Urueta.

There is a registration fee of £25 for the symposium. Register now.

This symposium is preceded by a CAMRI Research Seminar

Media Industries and Engagement

Tuesday 3 May, Boardroom, 309 Regent Street, London, 5pm to 7pm

Today media engagement is multi-faceted, working across political and public spheres, policy and industry sectors, audiences, and popular culture. The panel, including speakers from the television and film industry, takes the form of a dialogue between industry and academic researchers involved in a collaborative project on production and audience research on engagement, which is funded by the Wallenberg Foundation and in collaboration with Endemol Shine Group.

Find more information on the seminar here.

Categories: Conferences

Oct

Wed

Facts and Lies about Africa: A Matter of Life and Death @ University of Westminster (Boardroom)

Tickets

Oct 19 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

On 19 October, Africa Check and the Africa Media Centre will debate the continued distortion and misrepresentation of Africa in public debate and the media. The event is hosted by Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) and the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) and will be held at the University of Westminster’s Regent Campus.

All across the length and breadth of Africa, from South Africa to Senegal, people make decisions, big and small, every day. To do this, they have to rely on the best information that is publicly available. But often the information about Africa in the mainstream media, public discussions and social media is partial, misleading or just plain wrong.

Misleading claims about minority populations, replayed in the traditional and social media, have led to everything from xenophobic attacks in South Africa in 2015 to the Rwandan genocide of 1994. False media reports into health problems, such as polio, and supposed cures for diseases from HIV/AIDS to Ebola, have caused unnecessary sickness and death across the continent.

Africa Check, the continent’s first independent fact-checking website, was set up in 2012. It is based at the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Today, Africa Check runs four offices – in South Africa, Senegal, Kenya and Nigeria – and fact-checks key claims leading public figures make. Africa Check publishes its findings on its site and in partnership with the wider media.

The organisation is a leading member of International Fact-Checking Network, a grouping of independent fact-checking organisations from around the world.

Peter Cunliffe-Jones, founder of Africa Check, will present a paper focusing on his organisation and the impact its work has had so far. Dr Winston Mano, Director of the Africa Media Centre, will analyse reasons why Africa is misrepresented, its impact on the continent and methods with which researchers can help overcome the problem. The event and discussion will be chaired by Professor Christian Fuchs, who is Director of both the Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies and the Communication and Media Research Institute.

This evening marks the beginning of a series of events carried out by the new partnership between WIAS, Africa Check and Africa Media Centre. Apart from events, the partnership will involve joint research and other activities.

Book your place:

The event is free to attend, but pre-booking your place is neccessary.

Book your place.

Contact:

Peter Cunliffe-Jones: peter@africacheck.org
Dr Winston Mano: manow@westminster.ac.uk
Prof Christian Fuchs: c.fuchs@westminster.ac.uk

Dr Winston Mano is Director of the Africa Media Centre and Reader in Media and Communication Studies at the University of Westminster in London, UK. He is also Editor of the Journal of African Media Studies and Course Leader of the Media and Development MA course. Mano’s research and publications focus on media and social change in Africa.

Professor Christian Fuchs is Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute. He is also Director of the Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies. His fields of expertise are critical digital & social media studies, Internet & society, political economy of media and communication, information society theory, social theory and critical theory. He has published extensively in these fields.

Peter Cunliffe-Jones launched Africa Check in 2012 and has overseen it since. He has worked as a journalist for more than 25 years, primarily for the AFP news agency. He has reported on the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, has led the AFP Nigeria bureau and has worked as AFP chief editor for Asia. In 2016 he joined the University of Westminster as Visiting Researcher.

Categories: Conferences

Apr

Fri

Mapping Cultural Policy in the Arab Region @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Apr 21 @ 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

About the conference

The Arab Media Centre’s 12th international conference, ‘Mapping Cultural Policy in the Arab Region’, aims to bring together academics, artists, policymakers, activists and civil society groups to discuss the role of ‘culture’ and ‘cultural policy’ in the Arab region within a context that takes into account the recent historical and political events that are reshaping the region’s societies, economies and culture industries.

Looking ahead to a post-oil future, Gulf states have for more than a decade been systematically investing in ‘culture’ or what is known as the ‘creative’ economy. In Arab countries that saw regime change since the uprisings of 2010, cultural policy constitutes an indispensable tool of struggle for both revolutionary and anti-revolutionary forces. And while the politics of difference and representation have resurfaced as a key and contentious issue in several Arab countries, Arab youth and subcultures, alienated by state-owned cultural institutions and the private culture industry sectors, have sought DIY strategies and independent sources of funding to give voice to new and alternative artistic forms of expression, including performative arts, experimental film and music.

The conference raises a number of questions:

What lessons can be learnt from the history of cultural policy in the Arab region?
How does focus on ‘Arab policy’ reinforce the marginalisation of non-Arab cultures in the region?
What roles do the Arab states play in the promotion of the Arts and to what end?
Have the Arab uprisings triggered a necessary or urgent interest in cultural policy?
What do we know about the politics of cultural policy making in the Arab region?
How do we assess the global/Western funding of Arab arts and cultures?
How do we evaluate and critique the Arab cultural policy reports emerging from the UN Convention on Cultural Diversity?

Conference fees and registration

This one-day conference, taking place on Friday 21 April 2017, will consist of plenaries and parallel workshops. The Keynote Speaker for the conference is Professor Naomi Sakr.

The fee for registration for all participants, including presenters, will be £85, with a concessionary rate of £43 for students, to cover conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs.

Please register to attend.

Programme

Download the Conference Programme (PDF).

Finalised programme will be uploaded nearer to the date of the conference.

Travel expenses

Participants fund their own travel and accommodation expenses.

Publication

There will be various openings for publication of selected conference papers, which will be discussed further after the conference.

Further information

For further information please email har-events@westminster.ac.uk.

Categories: Conferences

May

Sat

ICTs and Society Conference: Digital Objects, Digital Subjects @ University of Westminster (Little Titchfield)

Tickets

May 20 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

An Interdisciplinary Symposium hosted by the Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies. The journal, tripleC: Communication, Capitalism Critique supports and helps organising the symposium.

Conference Co-Convenors and Chairs

Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster, Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies & Communication and Media Research Institute
David Chandler, University of Westminster, Department of Politics and International Relations, Centre for the Study of Democracy

About the symposium

Many claims have been made about the emergence of a digital turn that is said to have radically transformed the possibilities for politics through undermining traditional modernist binaries of subject/object, state/society, politics/economics, public/private, consumption/production, time/space, mind/body, labour/leisure, culture/nature, human/posthuman. This turn has run through several phases, including cybernetics, automation technologies, mainframe computers, databases, artificial intelligence, personal computers, the World Wide Web, smart phones, geographical information systems, social media, targeted digital advertising, self-quantification, big data analytics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things.

This conference will develop interdisciplinary assessments of the digital’s impact on society. It will interrogate the claims of both digital optimism and digital pessimism. Digital optimists assert that digital technologies have radically transformed the world; promising new forms of community, alternative ways of knowing and sensing, creative innovation, participatory culture, networked activism, and distributed democracy. Digital pessimists argue that digital technologies have not brought about positive change, but have rather deepened and extended domination through new forms of control. They speak of networked authoritarianism, digital de-humanisation, alienation 2.0, networked exploitation, or the rise of the surveillance society.

Presenters at the symposium will engage with questions of the digital in respect to activism, research and critique. The conference will engage with the possibilities, potentials, pitfalls, limits, and ideologies of digital activism. It will reflect on whether computational social science, the digital humanities and ubiquitous datafication enable new research approaches or result in a digital positivism that threatens the independence of critical research and brings about the death of the social sciences and humanities. The conference will explore the futures, places and possibilities of critique in the age of digital subjects and digital objects.

Keynote speakers

David Chandler
Jodi Dean
Paolo Gerbaudo
Orit Halpern
Kylie Jarrett
Antonio Negri
Antoinette Rouvroy
Etienne Turpin
Jack Linchuan

How to attend

To register and read the keynote speakers’ abstracts, please visit the ICTs and Society website.

Categories: Conferences

Jun

Thu

Rights and might: Cultural counter-narratives of the migrant and refugee experiences @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Jun 22 @ 9:00 am – Jun 25 @ 6:00 pm

PART OF REFUGEE WEEK

Conference organised by University of Westminster’s
Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI)
Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM)
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

According to UNHCR, globally there are now more than 65 million forcibly displaced persons, including 21 million refugees, who have left their homes as a result of conflict, persecution, famine, and environmental disasters. Meanwhile, migrants have also courageously left their homes of origin behind to voluntarily pursue a better life often motivated by freedom, education, economic opportunities or to reunite with family.

While many are tackling the topical challenges of migration and refugees few, if any, are addressing it from a cultural narrative or cultural rights perspective. The Rights and Might conference, organised by an interdisciplinary group of University of Westminster faculties representing media, art, design and social sciences, emphasises the need to amplify the voices and power of refugee and migrant narrativity while connecting dialogues and discussions to policies and inclusion/exclusion practices of host societies.

This conference offers a meaningful cross-cultural and interdisciplinary engagement with hitherto neglected refugee, migrant and exilic experiences presented through a film festival alongside theory, practice and policy discussions aimed at policymakers, academics and students, as well as to wider publics/citizens. It brings together international filmmakers, musicians, and artists who are involved in capturing and responding to individual stories of struggles and successes of individual migrants and refugees living and working in the UK, from the Georgian period to the present day, with policymakers, practitioners and academics working globally on migration and refugee issues.

Rights and Might encourages discussion of the hidden opportunities and unspoken challenges faced by migrants and refugees. The objective is to unravel little known personal and positive stories of migrants in changing contexts and to detail their agency, including their vital contributions to reshaping cultural landscapes and artistic expression.

Registration

The conference, held 21-24 June 2017, will consist of an opening reception, a keynote, a radio industry panel, 9 parallel panels and an artist’s presentation. There will also be a concurrent film festival held 24-25 June 2017 at Regent Street Cinema. The conference fee is £45, with a concessionary rate of £22 for students, which covers conference documentation, refreshments and administrative costs.

Please register to attend the conference.

Programme

Download the conference programme.

Film Festival

Film festival passes and tickets for the individual films are sold separately through the Regent Street Cinema box office. A Rights and Might Film Festival pass is available for £25 to the general public and £15 for conference registrants and individual tickets are £12 each regular price and £7.00 each for students and conference participants. The Sunday film shorts program 11:00am-3:30 pm is free to all.

Rights & Might Film Festival details passes and tickets are on sale on the Regent Street Cinema website.

Categories: Conferences

Jun

Fri

Different Bodies: (Self-)Representation, Disability and the Media @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Jun 23 @ 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

This one-day conference seeks to explore representations of the body as strange, shameful, wrong, impaired, wounded, scarred, disabled, lacking, different or ‘other’ in contemporary media.

The advent of digital media has underlined the importance of visual culture and our curiosity in representations of the body to form opinions about ourselves and others. Media portrayals of bodies can affect our lives because media are one of the primary agents of socialization (Moore and Kosut, 2010). Bodies we see in newspapers, on television and in our social media feeds are often made to appear perfect in order to conform to racialized and heteronormative ideals of what it means to be beautiful and normal in contemporary capitalist societies. Presentations of the body that are white, young, slim and productive have been critiqued from different fields in academia such as feminism, queer theory, disability studies, critical theory and postcolonial studies.

The digital media landscape is posing new challenges to the study of body representation. The Internet and social media in particular have led to an increased representation and engagement with the body through practices such as selfies, webcamming, blogging, vlogging and so on. While digital media may contribute to an empowerment of excluded and silenced bodies, they may equally open up spaces of discrimination, threats, hatred, trolling and silencing online.

A critical approach to representations of bodies and disability is therefore essential as a means of change (Bolt, 2014). This conference aims to develop a new understanding of disability and the media in the 21st century by establishing a dialogue between different scholars on the theme of body representations. In particular, we seek to formulate new questions to comprehend how the tension between non-digital and digital media is creating spaces for new ways of framing disabled bodies. How are new narratives being developed to recount diversity? What is their function? What is the relationship between representation of the body in news outlets and self-representation on social media? What are the epistemological opportunities the media could embrace in order to promote equality, health literacy and ultimately, a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to be human?

Programme

09.00-09.30 Registration and Refreshments

09.30-09.35 Opening remarks: Diana Garrisi and Jacob Johanssen

09.40-11.00 Panel One: Prosthetics and Limbs

Emma Pullen, Carrie Hodges, Dan Jackson, Richard Scullion and Michael Silk (Bournemouth University): Representing para-bodies: The mediation between production and consumption in Paralympic broadcasting

Yana Reynolds (King’s College): ‘My Fake Leg is a Form of Power Dressing’: Amputee Bodies in Lifestyle Media

Helena Taubner (Halmstad University): “At least I can Walk” – Online Re-negotiation of Identity in Post-stroke Aphasia

Tomoko Tamari (Goldsmiths): Representations of Disability and the Prosthetic Body

11.00-11.20 Tea Break

11.20-12.40 Panel Two: Approaches and Debates

Colette Gilkes (University of Bristol): Nietzsche and the Social Model of Disability

Megan Bent (Independent Scholar): Vulnerable Strength: The Power of Self-Representation and Disclosure Through Art

Rachel Velody (University of Hertfordshire): Re-inscribing the Feminine in Breast Cancer

Alex Haagaard (OCAD University): ‘Spoonie’ Selfies: Dismantling the Medical-Scientific Hegemony of the Ill Body

12.40-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.30 Keynote

Professor Lisa Blackman (Goldsmiths): Loving the Alien: Bodies, Futures, Mediation

14.30-15.50 Panel Three: Femininities

Sarah Hill (University of Oxford Brookes): “Make-Up and Motivation”: Exploring Disabled Girls’ Self-Representation Practices Online

Alison Wilde (Leeds Beckett University): The Re-presentation and Self-representation of Disabled Womanhood in Britain’s Missing Top Model

Theodora Thomadakis (University of Roehampton): The emotional manifestation of the Naked ‘good’ and ‘bad’ postfeminist body in popular media: A psychoanalytic discussion

Nathalie Weidhase (University of Roehampton): “They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no no no”: Amy Winehouse, Postfeminist Disorders and the Performance of the Abject Female Body

15.50-16.10 Break

16.10-16.40 Keynote: Changing Faces

Henrietta Spalding and Steve Taylor

16.40-17.40 Panel Four: Masculinities

Beccy Collings (University of East Anglia): The Modern Day ‘Wound Man’?: Professional Wrestling and Wound Culture

Jenna Pitchford-Hyde (University of East Anglia): Militarised Masculinity and Warrior Bodies: Representing Disabled Veterans of the Desert Wars in US and UK Media

Diego Semerene (Brown University): Tailoring the Phallus: The Sartorial Making and Re-Making of the Male Body from The Early Men’s Suit to Social Media’s Muscle Mania

17.40-18.00 Closing Remarks: Jacob Johanssen and Diana Garrisi

18.00 Drinks

Registration

Categories: Conferences

Sep

Wed

TRANS TV @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Sep 13 @ 9:00 am – Sep 15 @ 5:00 pm

Transformations in Television Industries
Transformations of Television Consumption Practices
Transformation of Televisual Narratives and Identities
21st Century Transnational and Transmedia Television Practices

Organisers

Organised in collaboration with the CREAM and CAMRI research centres and the Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster.

Organising Committee: Dr Michael Goddard, Dr Christopher Hogg, Jane Thorburn, Dr Paul Dwyer, Ged Maguire, Robert Benfield, Simon Passmore.

Confirmed Academic Keynotes

Professor Amanda Lotz (University of Michigan)
Professor Matt Hills (University of Huddersfield)
Associate Professor Jaap Kooijman (University of Amsterdam)

The conference will also feature key television industry guests TBC.

About the conference

This conference proposes an examination of contemporary television under the impact of new platforms for production, dissemination and consumption such as Netflix and Amazon, coming after earlier technological and cultural dislocations of television such as cable, satellite, and home recording practices. These shifts have already displaced television from a stable technological apparatus, conventional television institutions and networks and schedule-based viewing. The latest turn of this ongoing series of transformations poses questions of whether this is leading to a wider transformation of the very definition of the medium itself, as well as facilitating new forms of transmediality and transnationality in television production and consumption practices.

Drawing attention especially to the appearance of more Trans as well as LGBTQ figures within such recent US series as Orange is the New Black, Transparent, Sense8 and others, this conference will propose the idea that television itself is going through its own ‘trans’ period, an unpredictable metamorphosis of its identity, arguably allowing for richer post-network complexity in televisual narratives, characterization, style and aesthetics. At the same time, it is important to look closely at how these aesthetic shifts are related to industrial practices like commissioning, international co-productions and modes of consumption in an era in which television content may be primarily designed to be consumed via these new platforms, even if produced by a more conventional television organisation. In order to address these shifts in both industrial practices and television aesthetics, the conference will consist of both theoretical/analytic and industry/production studies streams, as well as roundtables bringing these streams together.

We envisage several publication outputs from the conference as well as other forms of impact.

Draft programme can be downloaded here.

Registration

Registration will be £100 for academics with permanent positions and £50 for students and underemployed participants and will open later in the year.

Please register via Eventbrite.

Registration will close 23 August 2017

Categories: Conferences

Sep

Tue

VIRAL/GLOBAL Popular Cultures and Social Media: An International Perspective @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Sep 19 @ 9:00 am – 8:00 pm

Conference organised by the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI)

Keynote Panel: Virality, Social Media and Popular Culture

Chair: Dave Morley, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Nancy Baym, Microsoft Research

Emily Keightley, Loughborough University

Winston Mano, University of Westminster

Tony D Sampson, East London University

Paddy Scannell, Media, Culture and Society

This interdisciplinary conference aims to examine how and why everyday popular culture is produced and consumed on digital platforms. There is increasing interest in studying and discussing the linkages between popular cultural and social media, yet there exist important gaps when comparing such cultural phenomena and modes of consumption in a global, non-west-centric context. The conference addresses a significant gap in theoretical and empirical work on social media by focusing on the politics of digital cultures from below and in the context of everyday life. To use Raymond Williams’s phrase, we seek to rethink digital viral cultures as ‘a whole way of life’; how ‘ordinary’, everyday digital acts can amount to forms of ‘politicity’ that can redefine experience and what is possible.

The conference will examine how social media users engage with cultural products in digital platforms. We will also be assessing how the relationship between social media and popular cultural phenomena generate different meanings and experiences.

The conference engages with the following key questions:

How do online users in different global contexts engage with viral/popular cultures?
How can the comparative analysis of different global contexts help us contribute to theorising emergent viral cultures in the age of social media?
How do viral digital cultures redefine our experience of self and the world?

Conference papers will address the following themes:

Analysing viral media texts: method and theory
Theorising virality: new/old concepts
Rethinking popular culture in the age of social media
Social media, politicity and the viral
The political economy of viral cultures
Memes, appropriation, collage, virality and trash aesthetics
Hybrid strategies of anti-politics in digital media
Viral news/Fake news
Non-mainstream music, protest, and political discussion
Capitalism and viral marketing

PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION

This one-day conference will consist of a keynote panel and panel sessions. The fee for registration for all participants, including presenters, is £40, with a concessionary rate of £15 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs.

Please register on Eventbrite by clicking here.

Click here for the full programme.

Categories: Conferences

Jun

Fri

Democratisation, national elections and fake news in africa: issues and the way forward @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Jun 28 @ 1:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Organised by CAMRI’s Global Media Research Network’s (GMRN)

Africa Media Series, University of Westminster

There is a view that national elections are becoming a ritual, an event without much significance for democratic governance in many countries in the continent. The issues range from party/state captured institutions, corruption and outright lies to the electorate. In 2019 over a dozen African countries face presidential elections and at this crucial time when election processes are monitored for rigging and countries await results in fear of civilian unrest, journalism can mediate between candidates and voters.

This one-day symposium aims to bring together scholars and practitioners in the fields of journalism and politics to engage with the main issues of reporting the elections in an environment that presents critical challenges in terms of transparency.

The symposium will look in particular to answer these pressing questions:

What does it mean to report the news at such crucial times?
Are fast headlines and journalists on twitter endangering the democratic process?
Is fake news a candidate’s best friend and a nation’s worst enemy?
How has fake news influenced outcomes and how can the national press counter this emerging trend?
Are these even the right questions to ask?

Speakers:

Peter Cunliffe-Jones, Founder Africa Check

Dr Winston Mano, Global Media Research Network’s Africa Media Series, CAMRI, University of Westminster

Fidelis Omozuapo, Managing Director Adeste Advisory Limited

Francine Mukwaya, Congolese Activist and Human Rights Campaigner

Moses Rono, Political Risk Analyst, BBC Monitoring

James Asante, former communications director of the National Democratic Congress -Ghana

Anna Lekas Miller, Media Diversity Institute

Rosemary Ajayi, Digital Africa Research Lab

Felicia Appenteng Chair, IE Africa Center IE University

13:30 – 15:00 First panel presentations and discussion with the audience

15:00 – 15:30 teas and coffee

15:30 – 16:00 Second panel presentations and discussion with the audience

17:00 – 19:00 Networking drinks reception

Categories: CAMRI Organised Events Conferences

Apr

Fri

[CANCELLED] Mediating, Constructing and Dismantling Race(ism) @ University of Westminster (The Boardroom)

Tickets

Apr 17 all-day

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THIS IS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED – Please see below for information from the organising committee

As you already know, the coronavirus pandemic is spreading across the world and in the UK. In view of the situation and the measures taken by governments, travel companies and universities, we have been debating the best approach. We are taking the situation very serious.

We first send our sympathies to all of you who have to self-isolate or are worried about their families and friends. We decided, in light of the crisis mode and very likely impeding lock-down measures in many countries, including our international attendees, that we too have to cancel our conference.

This is not a decision we took lightly, this is an important event, in which we put so much love and dedication and hours of work. But we have to suspend. We want to let you know that we wish to postpone rather than cancel. But we realize this is not easy to plan, we simply do not know how long this pandemic will last. Therefore, postponing for merely a few weeks seems futile, and 2 months seems arbitrary at this moment.

We will get back to you about possibilities for holding this conference in the autumn. We will email in due course to check how you feel about participation at a later stage.

We send our solidarity to all of you, and especially those in precarious employment or health insurance.

Tarik Sabry, Geetanjali Kala, Miriyam Aouragh.

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Keynote Speakers
Professor Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne, Australia
Professor Dibyesh Anand, University of Westminster, UK

.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]Institutional and structural racism are major realities that impede different areas of social life, both domestically and internationally. Over the past decade, mass protests in West Asia, North Africa, South America, and other parts of the world created an important transformative momentum, which in turn triggered debates about race, cultural difference and the role of anti-racism in grassroots politics against authoritarianism. The (not so) new issues activists are facing include migration, modern forms of slavery, backlash against indigenous assertion, the plight of south-Asian and African (domestic, construction) workers, the trafficking of female migrants across Europe, colourism and the mainstreaming of Far Right politics speaking against liberal multiculturalism in the defence of the imagined majority.

The 2020 International Conference: Mediating, Constructing, Dismantling Race(ism) is centred around the notion of ‘Race’ and its different cogent variations – ‘racism’, ‘racialisation’, ‘racialised’ – but brings race into conversation with global capitalism, transnational political processes, historical and contemporary social change and technological mediation. Firstly, the conference welcomes papers that explore a new economy of power relations and its interdependency with resistance; this particular connection remains largely understudied in relation to race and racism in non-western contexts. Secondly, we are interested in focusing on ‘transversal’ struggles that are not limited to one county, or necessarily confined to a particular political or economic form of government, but as a form of power that applies itself to everyday life, categorises, makes individuals subjects, subjugates and makes subject too. In this respect, and thirdly, the conference also encourages contributions that may focus on ‘immediate’ struggles that are closer to individuals and their everyday experiences and act as vantage points from which to critique instances of power. Although many campaigns focus on ‘immediate’ struggles that have initiated a scathing critique of nationalism and nativism; of exclusionary discourses of citizenship vis-à-vis minority communities; of rationalisations of beauty; we are interested in approaches that embed the way modern subjectivities are constructed in particular ethnographic social hierarchies, and invite frameworks that trace these convergences along the ways capital flows create the conditions under which colonial manifestations (such as slavery) return.

This event is an initiative of the Communication and Media Research Institute’s newly established Global Media Research Network (GMRN) and the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster. The full-day conference on the 17^th of April 2020 provides a space to debate these questions; to understand the often-contentious relationship between theory and practice across disciplines; and to bring the work of activists and academics closer together. This event is part of the underlying aspiration to encourage critical collaboration between scholars and activists.

Academic-activist Keynote Speakers
Lucia Kula, Black Student Support Coordinator, SOAS
Akram Salhab, organiser at Migrants Organise
Chardine Taylor-Stone, Cultural Producer and Writer

PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION

This one-day conference on Friday, 17th of April 2020, will consist of 2 academic keynote presentations, four parallel panel sessions and 3 academic-activist keynote presentations. The fee for this conference has be waived by the Communication and Media Research Institute. Registration is required via this link: https://forms.gle/u8d2fxtY5yHWFd5d9[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]

Conference Organisation Committee and Advisory Board:

Miriyam Aouragh
Christian Fuchs
Deborah Husbands
Geetanjali Kala
Ben Pitcher
Pablo Morales
Tarik Sabry
Doug Specht
Roza Tsagarousianou[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories: Conferences

Oct

Mon

ECREA 2022 Pre-conference: The Impact of Streaming on Media Industries and Cultural Production @ Online

Tickets

Oct 17 @ 9:00 am – 5:45 pm

JOINING INSTRUCTIONS: will be announced as soon as we get them from ECREA. Check this link nearer the time for this information: https://mediaindustriesecrea.wordpress.com/

Streaming media content, live or recorded, has experienced exponential growth during the COVID19 pandemic. Streaming, understood as the digital transmission and reception of files over the Internet, refers to text, audio and video content. It has impacted upon both content distribution and consumption in a variety of sectors such as film, television, games, publishing, music, and radio/podcasts. The multiple forms and commercial models through which streaming services are organized — from transnational streaming services, to such that target specific geographical markets or audiences, and from commercial to indie and public service streaming — transform cultural production in manifold ways. With streaming, consumption has become more on demand and personalised.

This ECREA 2022 pre-conference is particularly interested in bringing together scholars examining the impact of streaming on different media industry sectors and/or in different countries and production contexts. It especially welcomes contributions that explore the impact of streaming along different parts of the media supply-chain, from the front-end distribution and delivery of content, through content delivery networks and physical infrastructure operations.

Rather than the usual format, this online conference will consist of workshops made up of 5-10-minute provocations/statements designed to generate debate and discussion.

ecrea-micp-streaming-preconf-programme-final

Categories: Conferences External Events

Jun

Thu

Regulating Digital Media in the Global South: What Are the Challenges? @ University of Westminster

Tickets

Jun 27 – Jun 28 all-day

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The last 20 years have seen an exponential increase in the production and uses of digital media content by a large and important young political generation. These digital media platforms have the potential to create positive social, cultural and economic change. However, the centralised structure of these platforms often leads to tax evasion and disregard for local laws, with countries in the global South being particularly susceptible to exploitation by such platforms which exploit long-standing colonial power structures to enhance their profits and obscure transparency. Media regulatory laws in countries of the global South have found it difficult to contend with this new digital colonialism, and often lack the institutional capacities and frameworks for effective regulation of digital media content.

This two-day international conference, organised by the University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), brings together media academics, media regulators, policy makers and civil society groups to discuss and debate the key challenges facing countries of the global South in regulating digital media in the age of the Internet. The conference will focus on how media regulators, civil society groups, and other public stakeholders can come together to tackle the complexities of digitalization.

The conference will include keynotes by media regulators and academics, plenaries, round tables and workshops led by experts in media regulation.

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Download Programme

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Conference fees and registration

This two-day conference, taking place on 27-28th June 2024, will consist of keynotes from the global South, plenaries and parallel workshops. The fee for registration for all participants, including presenters, will be £150, with a concessionary rate of £50 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs.

Registration is now open

Registration for Speakers closes on: 8th April 2024

Registration for attendees closes on: 10th June 2024

UoW Staff and Students should register here.

Keynote Speakers

Professor María Soledad Segura, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC)

Keynote; “Digital rights and digital media in the Global South. Lessons from media regulation reforms and participatory communication policy institutions in Latin America”

Professor viola milton, University of South Africa

Keynote: “Networking Relational Accountability?: towards relational, pluriversal approaches to digital media governance”

Professor Paola Ricaurte Quijano, TECNOLÓGICO DE MONTERREY, Mexico

Keynote; “Algorithmic Governmentality: A Latin American Perspective.”

Professor Naomi Sakr, University of Westminster, UK

Keynote: “Who prevails? Resistance to Arab cybercrime laws amid global ambiguity on cybersecurity”

Professor Winston Mano, University of Westminster, UK

Workshop: Regulating Tech in Africa: Emerging Trends, Issues and Concerns

Dr Andrea Medrado, University of Westminster, UK

Workshop: “Applying Latin American Participatory Action Research (PAR) to Critical Data and AI Studies”

Tim Davies, Connected by Data, UK

Workshop: “Public voice and the governance of data and AI in the global south: exploring narratives and potential practice?”

Professor Guy Berger, Rhodes University, South Africa

Keynote: “The question is who is to be master — that’s all”. Applying Humpty Dumpty’s dictum to digital governance in the Global South.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories: Call for Papers CAMRI Organised Events Conferences

May 2015 – June 2024 May 2015 – Jun 2024