[eccr] Call for Papers for a workshop "Media Change - Community Change" 10-11 of October 2003

Estimated Colleagues,

Please distribute the following call for papers for a workshop in 
English and German Language to the members of the eccr mailing list.

Thank you very much
Friedrich Krotz




Call for Papers for the Workshop


„Media Change – Community Change“


Organising Body:	The Media, Public Sphere and Gender Section with the 
Media Sociology Section of the DGPuK (Fachgruppen Medien, 
Öffentlichkeit, Geschlecht und Soziologie der Medienkommunikation der DGPuK)

Date/Place:	10th – 11th October 2003 in Münster, Conference Centre 
Franz-Hitze-Haus

Organising Team:	Dr. Andreas Hepp; PD Dr. Jutta Röser


The relationship between media changes and changes within communities 
can be seen as an implicit starting point for a multiplicity of 
theoretical and empirical work. As far as earlier television audience 
research is concerned these studies focused on the interconnectedness of 
actions within the media and the constitution of communities as well as 
gender positions within the domestic context. Qualitative research into 
the content of various mass media components described these as playing 
a vital part in the construction of imagined communities such as the 
nation. Together with the increasing orientation towards popular culture 
within media and communication studies, interpretive and fan communities 
of popular genres became objects of study. The research into cyber 
culture and network communication examined how the internet facilitates 
the development of (new) virtual communities. Today, the tendency 
towards personal technologies changes conceptualisations of familial, 
partnership and job communities. Following on from this, mobile 
communication research is concerned with the question of how community 
structures change if media induced communicative connectivity is far 
more linked with people than with places. In all these approaches, 
communities are understood as being more or less stable social 
formations (however, not in an essentialist vein). Generally, the 
relationship between media change and community change has been in many 
ways a topic within the media and communication studies for years.

It is the aim of the workshop to deal with this so far rather ‘implicit’ 
topic of media and communication studies more explicitly. That means on 
the one hand to problematise various theories regarding the relationship 
between media changes and changes within communities. On the other hand, 
we want to discuss recent as well as ‘classical’ empirical studies from 
which to draw out processes of change in relation to media and 
community. The range of topics which the workshop would like to discuss, 
is, however, broad:

- How can the two concepts of media change and community change be 
theorised – especially in relation to one another? What can be gained 
from recent theoretical developments such as the theory of connectivity?
- The use of which methods seems appropriate to empirically describe the 
processional character of media and community change? Which methodical 
challenges does the necessary ‘diachronic’ perspective pose here?
- The domestic context, the ‘home’, is the key place to acquire 
knowledge about media technologies: How do domestic communities change 
according to the introduction of new media technologies, the tendency 
towards personalised technologies and the multiplication of the 
respective appliances? Which of these bear subsequent consequences, for 
example, for the interaction within the family circle (i.e. 
fragmentation of the family), the generational relationships within the 
family (i.e. facilitation and hindrance of communality through the 
media) and for gender relationships (changes within the organisation of 
space, gendered use of media technology)?
- If generational changes equal communal changes, what role does the 
media and the changes within (forms of) communication play there? Which 
roles do the different forms of media play in the existing opposition 
between youth cultures and communities of elderly people? Or do the 
increasingly mediated popular and leisure cultures facilitate communal 
forms beyond generational divisions?
- To what extent does media change contribute to changes within 
political communities? Does, for example, the introduction of digital 
media lead to changes within the spaces available for political 
engagement? What differences can be seen between different national, 
regional, local and deterritorial levels?
- How has the globalisation of mass communication (which lead to a 
cultural change) contributed to processes of community change? Which new 
forms of communality developed and which processes of change can be 
envisaged? Which challenges can be deduced for transcultural communication?

These and other questions will be discussed in the above workshop. Our 
aim is to develop perspectives for research into the relationship 
between media changes and changes within communities. The workshop is 
internationally oriented which means that it is possible to present 
one’s paper in English or German. A review scheme will operate to select 
from the submitted abstracts. Selected abstracts will be presented as 
papers during the workshop.

The workshop starts on Friday, 10th October 2003, and finishes on 
Saturday, 11th October 2003, in the Conference Centre Franz-Hitze-Haus 
in Münster. Until 31st July 2003, extended abstracts (2-3 pages) can be 
submitted to Andreas Hepp or Jutta Röser who can also be contacted if 
questions arise.

Contact:

Dr. Andreas Hepp	
TU Ilmenau, Institut für Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaft	
FG Medienwissenschaft	
PF 100565	
D-98684 Ilmenau		
Tel. +49- 3677-694670	
E-Mail: (Andreas.Hepp /at/ tu-ilmenau.de)	

or

PD Dr. Jutta Röser
Universität Zürich, Institut für Publizistikwissenschaft und 
Medienforschung (IPMZ)
Andreasstrasse 15
CH-8050 Zürich
(From 7/7/03: Wiener Str.22, D-48145 Münster, Germany)
Tel. +41-1-634-4683, -4661 (from 7/7/03: +49-0251-34932)
E-Mail: (roeserj /at/ aol.com)

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