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[ecrea] CFP: Digital Media Technologies Revisited: Theorising social relations, interactions and communication
Thu Feb 12 20:46:35 GMT 2009
ECREA Section Digital Culture and Communication
Digital Media Technologies Revisited: Theorising
social relations, interactions and communication
University of the Arts (UdK), Berlin, Germany
Nov. 20-21, 2009
Call for papers URL: <http://digitalcultureandcommunication.blogspot.com/>
Web site: <http://www.ecrea.eu/divisions/section/id/5>
Contact Email: <mailto:(hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)>(hartmann /at/ udk-berlin.de)
This two-day conference on ?Digital Technologies
Revisited? aims to understand contemporary
developments in digital media and digital
media theory by looking backwards as well as
forwards. We set out to explore an in-between
time: a time, when much of the hype concerning
digital media has died down, much research
material has been gathered and analyzed and quite
a bit about the possibilities and limitations
of digital media (especially in comparison to
older media forms) has been understood.
Far from a communication revolution, the media
landscape has nonetheless changed substantially
in recent years. In fact, we have undergone a
process of diffusion and appropriation: digital
media have become an important and
ever-increasing part of our everyday lives. They
suffuse our communication, information and
entertainment spheres. Not surprisingly, the
perceived connection between the internet and
many areas of social life, from work to play, has
steadily increased in recent years. However, even
as digital media become pervasive, ubiquitous,
common and mundane, innovation continues to
become an integral characteristic of digital
media forms, the proliferation of which is challenging to map.
We would therefore like to return to earlier
models and theories that attempted to explain new
(digital) media in its ?first wave? forms.
Additionally, we would like to address the
question of what kind of alterations and
additions can be used to adapt existing models
and theories for current purposes (e.g. mediated
person-to-person cmmunication; para-social
interactions with virtual agents; pseudo-social
interactions with intelligent machines, etc.).
The range of models and theories that can be
used, re-visited, or adapted is wide (i.e.
traditional communication studies models,
cultural studies theories, sociology and others).
We want to encourage papers that explore tensions
between older and new approaches and older and
newer ?new media? formations. Where has there
been movement, where not, and are there in fact new theories emerging?
The social world sits at the heart of these
diverse concerns. Social relations, interactions
and communication are at the heart of our
questions. Within this focus, the possible range
of theories and methods used, is wide. The
following provides the range of angles that we propose:
- HCI revisited:
Human-computer-interaction was an early
forerunner concerning questions of the relation
between humans and computers (as well as,
eventually, humans via computers). What do we
know of these relationships by now? How do they
differ from other human-object relationships? And
how do developments in these fields continue to
inform, intersect and diverge from the social life of digital media forms?
- - Virtual reality and AI re-thought:
Virtual reality and AI frameworks are another
reference point that dominated earlier
cybercultural theory, and design. What was
specific about these moments and intersections?
Why have these frameworks become less used by
technocultural theory (at least for more popular
theorizations)? What has survived in terms of
virtual reality and AI concepts in contemporary
formations such as Web 2.0, Facebook and Second Life?
- - Disappearance of the machine ?
ubiquity, ambience and similar approaches
A more recent development has been around the
merging of machines, and computational
architecture with our environments. Thinking
about pervasive computing, sense perception and
intimate technologies are increasingly being used
as frameworks for analysis. Where are they at in
terms of the current state of development? And
what consequences would these have for existing
theoretical approaches (e.g. of appropriation of
media technologies) and questions of power? What
happens to ethical and political issues, such as
privacy, monitoring, etc.? What does pervasive
computing mean for our relationships with machines?
- - Identities 4.0?
Identity was a much discussed topic in early web
discourses. It is one that keeps returning in new
disguises. Identity, it seems, has survived the
?post? in identity politics. However, the
valences of identity are now much more negative
than the more utopic versions that proliferated
in early digital media cultures. Identity
categories have proliferated, and the
intersections of race, nation, class, gender,
sexuality and belief play a part in generating
insecurity and a lack of trust between citizens,
denizens and racialized others, the adult world
and ?youth?, or children and potential
?paedophiles?. Can early theorizations of
identity and digital media be brought to bear on
contemporary experiences and what would these look like?
- - Bodies
Community, identity and the body were the
tripartite features of digital media theory in
the 1990s. Whist community has been reformulated
as SL and social networking, and identity
continues to return, the body has also become an
increasingly urgent site of enquiry as
convergences of informational and
biotechnological practices of body knowledge
become materialized through digital media
practices. These intersections offer up questions
about the precise contours of current biodigital
identity in the form of intersecting DNA
databases, personal genomes, and biometrics. What
approaches and questions can address these
informatic corporealisations and their intersection with everyday life worlds?
- - Mass media, journalism and public communication
Since the mid-1990s, a broad corpus of theories
on the production, dissemination, reception, and
the public and/or personal impact of online mass
media has evolved in the social sciences. How do
journalists? routines change in online media?
Does the public relevance of journalistic mass
media decrease or increase in present and future
times? How can the (societal) diffusion or
(individual) appropriation of new media
developments described or analyzed? What do mass
media mean to the audience, and what are the
present and future economic perspectives of online mass media?
- COST 298
Additionally, COST 298 members are invited to
send separate abstracts for a COST panel. COST
298 is an Action within the intergovernmental
framework for European Co-operation in the field
of Scientific and Technical Research. In COST 298
European scientists from telecommunication
research departments, universities and operators
together with independent consultants collaborate
in cross-disciplinary groups to analyze the
social dimensions of people?s relationships to
information and communication technologies. In
the COST 298 panel, the same questions of older
models and newer developments that guide the
overall conference are asked more specifically
concerning the broadband society. What have we
learned in the last four years of the COST 298
network? Only COST 298 members will be eligible to apply for this panel.
- CFP
- Please submit an extended abstract (700
words max.) by the 31st of May 2009 (and clearly
stating which topic section you would like to
submit this to) to: Prof. Dr. Maren Hartmann -
University of the Arts (UdK), GWK -
Mierendorffstraße 30 - 10589 Berlin - Germany - Phone: +49 30 3185 2943
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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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Democracy, Journalism and Technology
Nico Carpentier, et al. (Eds.) @ UTPress
http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------------------
E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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