CFP: Cosmopolitanism, Media and Global
Crisis
An International Conference
Kingston University, UK
June 4th 2011
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Lilie Chouliaraki & Professor Paddy Scannell
In the last three decades the field of media studies has witnessed an
exponential growth of publications and research on globalization,
alongside critical examinations of the “national†in terms of media
systems, content and reception. Even more recently, there has been an
increasing critical interest in the ways in which global processes, and
especially the global circulation of media texts, can encourage a
cosmopolitanist outlook or identity for citizens across the world. As a
concept that responds both to the global and the national in denoting the
ability ‘to be able to live in both the global and the local at the
same time’ (Tomlinson 1999), cosmopolitanism is increasingly seen as an
alternative ideological response to globalisation, even as the latter has
been increasingly associated with ideas of crisis, disaster, terrorism,
and risk. Authors like Beck (2006) have insisted that we have now become
cosmopolitans by default whether we want to or not, thanks to the same
media images we all are simultaneously witnessing, but our ‘latent
cosmopolitanism’ is only triggered into an active attitude when faced
with global risks and crisis. Similarly, the extent to which media images
of ‘distant suffering’ (Boltanski, 1999), can manage to successfully
trigger an ethics of cosmopolitanism has been the focus of many other
authors (e.g., Chouliaraki 2006, Silverstone 2006).
Despite this growing interest, the field remains far from saturated,
especially in terms of empirical research and the practical application
of the theory in media studies. Cosmopolitanism is, without doubt, still
a much contested concept, and so are the ways in which it can be useful
in media studies as a conceptual, analytical and methodological tool.
This conference aims to contribute to this growing field of scholarship
by bringing together relevant research which explores and examines the
relationship between cosmopolitanism and media in an increasingly
fragmented, globalising world. A central focus of the conference is the
potential role of the media in providing a cosmopolitanist outlook for
its audiences, encouraging or discouraging cosmopolitanist
identifications, especially when engaging with global crisis and
disasters. We would like to focus on questions that have not been as
frequently asked. For example, how do cosmopolitan media discourses
intersect with other discourses, such as those of the nation, gender or
class? Can other popular media texts, besides news, also contribute to
cosmopolitanism, or is this debate only limited to hard news and their
representation of distant suffering? How can we employ cosmopolitanism as
an analytical and methodological category in media research and what are
the issues we are facing when employing cosmopolitanism in media studies?
Is cosmopolitanism restricted to Western media theory and cultural
production, or can there be a postcolonial, ‘cosmopolitanism from
below’?
Possible topics include (but are not restricted to) the following:
• Cosmopollitanism and Media Ethics
• Mediating Pain and Suffering
> • Cosmopolitanism and global fictional narratives (film, TV,
ficction)
• Application of theory and Issues of methodology
> • The cosmopolitan memory
• Celebrity compassion an and media
• Cosmopolitanism, the national, and/or postcoloniall
• Cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism
• Cosmosmopolitanism, consumerism and media
• ‘The Shock Doctrine ™, Disaster, and Globalisation
• Disaster Marathons and livve coverage
• Consumer Society and the Commodification of Trauma
Abstract Submission
500-word abstracts should be submitted using the
online form.
The deadline for submission is Sunday 16th January 2011.
Successful conference submissions will be notified by the second week of
February.
Conference organisers:
Dr Aybige Yilmaz and Dr. Aris Mousoutzanis
