[eccr] Porto-Allegre - Digital Divide and the Media: Challenges for Communication and Democracy

Call for papers

IAMCR
Porto-Allegre conference

Working Group on



Digital Divide and the Media: Challenges for Communication and Democracy


Convenor: Elena Vartanova

Digital divide has become a popular metaphor to describe existing and 
coming inequalities of the Information Age. Many scholars argued that in 
the digital world old discontinuities will remain and simultaneously would 
be also added by in digital or virtual spaces. In all national contexts 
unequal access to ICTs follows existing social and economic disproportions 
in societies
thus proving that mere technical connectiviness does not ultimately lead to 
realization of advantages brought by ICTs.

We witness that in the new network reality problems of digital divide are 
becoming even more complicated and sophisticated. Those who have never used 
digital technologies of the future consider them really liberating and 
therefore struggle for access. On the contrary those who get used to plug 
in and browse are becoming growingly disappointed either by still existing 
technical limitations of services or by incomplete contents. However, ICT 
continue to infiltrate our lives in many respects penetrating business, 
politics, and life of a civil society.  Moreover, they radically change the 
traditional media landscape and transform both public and individual media 
uses.

In our session we would like to focus on the following topics:

1)      what are the main consequences of the digital divide for a 
relationship between media and audience, emerging media structures and 
consumption of media products,
2)      how the traditional media roles including public service function, 
creation of public debates and political involvement could be fulfilled in 
conditions of growing digital divide and audience segmentation,
3)      what are the central players to reate public policies dealing with 
the digital divide and what attention is given to preventing new digital 
inequalities in national media policies of  most technologically advanced 
regions and countries (USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, Western Europe, etc.),
4)      how the problems of promotion of national online media, 
participation and access could be addressed in policies preventing digital 
divide,
5)      and, in particular, how media education and media awareness could 
benefit these policies.

Deadline:
Answers to this call should include an English abstract (length  1 page of 
text, Times New Roman type, 1,5 line space), the title of the presentation, 
name, address and details of affiliation of the sender. Deadline will be 
the 14th of February, 2004, to the head of the working group Elena 
Vartanova: <mailto:(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)>(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)
Proposals will be reviewed and all authors get an answer not later than at 
30th of April, 2004.
Abstracts should contain
·        title of paper,
·        name(s) of author(s) including name of institution, postal 
address, telephone, fax and e-mail addresses
·        the abstract text (not exceeding 1 500 characters)
If a proposal is accepted, the sender must fulfill two requirements. First, 
the presenter must e-mail a full paper until July, 15th, to the local 
organizers of the conference, <mailto:(jacqalwa /at/ pucrs.br)>(jacqalwa /at/ pucrs.br) 
and to the head of  the working group Elena Vartanova 
<mailto:(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)>(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)
Second, she or he must registrar her- or himself for participation in the 
Congress. This is possible at 
<http://www.pucrs.br/famecos/iamcr>www.pucrs.br/famecos/iamcr.


Submission


If you are interested to present a paper please immediately send to Elena 
Vartanova (<mailto:(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)>(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)), mentioning your 
name(s), name of institution and the title of your abstract/paper, so that 
we know what to expect.


Professor Elena Vartanova,
Moscow State University,
9 Mokhovaya,
Moscow 101999, Russia,
Phone: + 7 095 203 28 54
Fax: + 7 095 203 28 89
e-mail: <mailto:(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)>(eva /at/ journ.msu.ru)





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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
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Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17 - B-1081 Brussel - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-412.42.78
F: ++ 32 (0)2/412.42.00
Office: 4/0/18
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Media Sociology (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.30
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.28.61
Office: C0.05
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ kubrussel.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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