DIGITAL CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION (DCC) SECTION - CALL FOR PANELS AND PAPERS
European Communication Research and Education Association - ECREA

2nd ECREA CONFERENCE, Barcelona, 25-28 November 2008
Hosted by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) http:// www.ecrea2008barcelona.org

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15th February 2008

The 'Digital Culture and Communication' section invites everyone who works on these issues, within the broad theme of ECREA's 2nd international conference, 'Communication policies and culture in Europe' to submit proposals.

The section 'Digital Culture and Communication' aims to further exchange and develop research at the European level in the field of digital media and informational culture as this is broadly defined. We welcome work that crosses disciplines and that operates at the boundaries of what might generally be allowed to constitute media/ communication systems. The section actively seeks both empirical and theoretical/critical work.

Digital media technologies allow us to rethink existing media and communication theories and approaches (as well as research methods). They also force us to redefine traditional boundaries and to explore new forms of interaction. We therefore encourage work based on interdisciplinary approaches that address the broad theme of the conference call, and the section's interests. We welcome proposals which reflect both theoretical and methodological challenges in digital culture and communication research as well as those exploring new boundaries within the field.
For further information about the section please visit our (relative stable) blog at: www.digitalcultureandcommunication.blogspot.com/

or email Maren Hartmann: hartmann@udk-berlin.de and/or Caroline Bassett: C.Bassett@sussex.ac.uk, Kate O’Riordan: K.ORiordan@sussex.ac.uk

This invitation is for proposals of pre-organized panels, posters, and individual papers from established academics, young scholars, practitioners and postgraduate research students.
Individual paper proposals, individual poster proposals and panel
proposals can be submitted at the official conference website: www.ecrea2008barcelona.org

PAPER PROPOSALS: http://www.ecrea2008barcelona.org/eng/callfor_pa.asp
POSTER PROPOSALS: http://www.ecrea2008barcelona.org/eng/callfor_po.asp
PANEL PROPOSALS: http://www.ecrea2008barcelona.org/eng/callfor_pn.asp

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out in mid-April 2008,

Paper-presenters and panellists will be asked to confirm their intention to attend by registering before October 24, 2008.

Please note that, as a policy, ECREA Candidates can submit "one proposal as first author, and more as co-author (second, ...), chair or respondent of a panel - but a participant will be allowed only one paper presentation. The length of the individual abstracts is preferably 400 and maximum 500 words. A panel proposal combines a panel abstract with the individual abstracts, of each 400-500 words. Participants will indicate their preference for a specific section (where they want to present their paper / poster / panel)".

Digital Media: European Perspectives - UPDATE

Digital Culture and Communication , ECREA Section event

Thursday 1st of November, 2007 - Saturday 3rd of November, 2007

Flickr photos (tag: Sussex, ECREA)

Thursday 1st November, 1600-1900, in Russell 10,
Friday 2nd of November, 0900-1600, in Arts C233, followed by reception location tbc
Saturday 3rd of November, 0900-1300, in Russell 10


This workshop, organized by the Digital Culture and Communication section of ECREA,the European Communication Research and Education Association, supported and hosted by this Research Centre, will bring together researchers from all over Europe. The aim of the day is to explore different traditions of new media investigation/theorization within Europe – and to explore ways in which they may usefully be placed in dialogue with each other. In addition workshop attendees will explore possible future activities that may be organized through the ECREA structure – including potential collaboration via European funding (FP7).

ABSTRACTS

FULL PROGRAMME:
Thursday, 1st of November

Room: EDB 341
15:30-16:00 Registration, Welcome & Coffee

Room: Russell 10
16:00–16:30 Welcome: Themes and Dialogues

Caroline Bassett, University of Sussex, UK
After Convergence?: What Connects?

Session 1: Media and methods (Chair: Irmi Karl, University of Brighton, UK)

16:30-18:30

Maren Hartmann, University of the Arts Berlin, Germany
Ethnographies as dangerous tools

Adolfo Estalella, Elisenda Ardèvol, Edgar Gómez, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
Media as practice: Introducing symmetry in Internet ethnographies


Friday, 2nd of November

Room: Arts C233

Session 2: Sounds & Senses (Chair: Kate Lacey, University of Sussex, UK)

09:00-11:00
Frauke Behrendt, University of Sussex, UK
Mobile Sonic Experience: Methodological Concerns

Holger Schulze, University of the Arts Berlin, Germany
Experiencing Medialised Senses: On the Tectonics of Media

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

Session 3: Policy Issues (Chair: Bridgette Wessels)

11:30-12:30
Maria Sourbati, University of Brighton, UK
Europe’s digital media policy discourses and the problem of the user

12:30-14:00 Lunch & Coffee

Session 4: Theoretical frameworks and cyberculture (Chair: David Berry, University of Wales Swansea, UK)

14:00-16:00
Panagiota Alevizou, LSE, UK
Collective intelligence and the cult of open production: critical reflections on theory and methodology

Bridgette Wessels, University of Sheffield, UK
On digital cultures as cultural forms: participation, narrative and infrastructures in achieving digital cultural engagement

17:00 Reception


Saturday 3rd of November

Room: Russell 10
Session 5: Theorizing (digital) television (Chair: Holger Schulze - TBC)

09:00-11:00
Fonta Group, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
The theory of swarms in the models of organization of the audio-visual companies of digital television

Emma Hemmingway, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Actor Network Theory and Media: A new approach to theorising media practice

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-13:00 Panel: The Disappearance of the Digital Distinction?
Research Challenges, New media scholarship in Europe, Collaborative Funding?

Panelists: Holger Schulze, and TBA.
Led by: Kate O’Riordan, University of Sussex, UK




REGISTRATION:
Fee £35, this includes lunch, coffee and a drinks reception. It does not include accommodation and travel costs. To register email: V.A.Sammut@sussex.ac.uk

TRAVEL
How to find us
University of Sussex Campus Map

ACCOMODATION
University approved hotels.

Further hotels in the Brighton area:
http://tourism.brighton.co.uk/accommodation/

Rooms on Campus – please contact Vanessa Sammut V.A.Sammut@sussex.ac.uk to organise this option (subject to availability)
http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/aboutids/accom.html

FURTHER INFORMATION
For more information please contact Maren Hartmann at hartmann@udk-berlin.de

For information about Digital Culture streams of ECREA see http://www.ecrea.eu/divisions/section/id/5.

CALL FOR PAPERS (CLOSED)
Call for Papers

Digital Culture and Communication Section Meeting

The Digital Communication and Culture (DCC) section is organising a workshop in November 2007.


Title: Digital Media - European Perspectives


Date: 2 and 3 November 2007
University of Sussex, Centre for Material Digital CultureUK


The aim is to explore distinctive critical, theoretical and methodological perspectives around networked and pervasive media emerging in European research.


More detailed plans to follow.

Fibreculture CFP

Fibreculture Journal
http://journal.fibreculture.org


Call for papers

After convergence, what connects?

:: fibreculture :: has established itself as Australasia’s leading forum for discussion of internet theory, culture, and research. The Fibreculture Journal is a peer-reviewed journal that explores the issues and ideas of concern and interest to both the Fibreculture network and wider social formations.

Papers are invited for the ‘After convergence’ issue of the Fibreculture Journal, to be published early in 2008. Guest editors are Caroline Bassett (Sussex, UK), Maren Hartmann (Bremen, Germany) and Kate O’Riordan (Lancaster/Sussex, UK).

There are guidelines for the format and submission of contributions at http://journal.fibreculture.org

These guidelines need to be followed in all cases. Contributions should be sent electronically, as word attachments, to:

Guest editors:
Caroline Bassett (c.bassett@sussex.ac.uk)
Maren Hartmann (hartmann@udk-berlin.de)
Kate O’Riordan (k.oriordan@sussex.ac.uk)

Everything that arises does not converge. A more variegated landscape emerges as processes of digitalization, crystallizations of an intrinsically technological-social, continue re-shaping cultures and re-working societies, not in their image, but into something new. It is increasingly obvious that there is no digital behemoth, no single form, no single function, no New World Order. Rather a series of reconfigurations, reformulations, new functions, new contents, new spaces, new grounds, new uses, have emerged and are emerging within global media networks.

In response to the (not unexpected) non-arrival of the unifying beast, which is to say in response to the perceived exhaustion of convergence (or the re-definition of its limits), new disciplinary islands are being declared with ‘keep out’ and ‘invented here’ signs all over their beaches. In other words there has been a balkanization of techno-cultural investigation. Thus gaming scholars define themselves against internet scholars, or film scholars, locatives stand distinct from screeners. Particular groups of sub-specialists claim particular modes of inquiry: ethnographers for everyday life, speculative theory for digital art, for instance. Indeed, entire vocabularies, originally invoked in a spirit of general experimentation, are now corralled, restricted and defended by particular groups. If these vocabularies often seize up in the process, refusing to say more than they were meant to say, and in particular refusing the unorthodox connections between the empirical and the speculative, the possible and the desirable, that gave them their energy in the first place, nobody seems to notice.

So, there is no behemoth. At the same time we insist that connections are produced and so a question we consider worth addressing is not what unites digital forms as one, but what connects them together as many. Further we want to explore how these connections are made. We are less interested in doing that through mainstreaming a particular critical approach (which is to say drawing different areas back under one critical umbrella, making that the connection), than we are in trying to think about exploring/defining/critiquing some of the shared characteristics of different digital media formations. We believe that despite the exhaustion of convergence metaphors, and the rise of disciplinary sub-divisions, these connections remain crucial.


Papers addressing but not limited to the following topics are welcome:

• Media/Medium Theory

• Difference between and specificity of New Media forms

• Issues, Limits, Problems of Convergence.

• Re-thinking the vocabulary of Affect/Emotion/Perception

• Histories of New Media Theory

• ‘Technology and Cultural Form’ revisited?

• Methodologies


Deadlines:

• 250 word abstracts: due February 28th 2007

• Completed Paper: due September 30th 2007

• Expected Publication: February 28th 2008.

Section Aims

The digital culture and communication section of the ECREA defines its main objectives as being to exchange and develop research and to build a research culture at the European level in the developing field of digital media and informational culture as this is broadly defined. We welcome work that crosses disciplines and that operates at the boundaries of what might generally be allowed to constitute media/communication systems. The section actively seeks both empirical and theoretical/critical work. Since digital culture and communication is one of the newest topics within the realm of media and communication research, it is (and should be) an important part of the European research agendas and deserves our full academic attention.

The section defines its work as follows:

1. To provide a forum for researchers who work on digital culture and
communication in the broad sense.
2. To develop further research in the field.
3. To build the basis for collaboration at all levels.
4. To encourage junior researchers.
5. To communicate existing work in the section to the broader academic world and to the public (at ECREA events, at other conferences, through talks at nonacademic events, through publications, etc.).
6. To liaise with other sections within the ECREA wherever possible.
7. To further the European research area.

Digital media technologies allow us – indeed force us – to rethink existing media and communication theories and approaches (as well as research methods). They also force us to redefine traditional boundaries – for instance those between traditional broadcast media and interpersonal communication – and to explore new forms of interaction. Developments in this field have repercussions for the field of media and communication research as a whole. Exchange with others in the wider field is therefore crucial.

Full version here: Digital Culture and Communication Section