[ecrea] cfp new media ecology

CALL FOR PAPERS: THE NEW TELEVISION ECOSYSTEM


The whole media system, and the television in particular, is
undergoing strong changes, especially related to the process of
digitalisation and to the diffusion of the broadband society. Television
has had, for nearly fifty years, a precise and relatively stable status:
at least, we could define in a rather clear way what we meant by
“television experience” or “watching TV” (Abruzzese, 1995; Scaglioni
& Sfardini 2008). But especially in the last decade strong processes
of innovation, diversification and hybridization have begun to reshape
the current framework of producing and consuming television. The
television is one of the devices which is subjected at the same time to a
double process, both of divergence and convergence (Fortunati, 2008),
while its screen has both expanded and shrunk dramatically from the flat
screens to the tiny windows of mobile phones and iPods (Hilmes, 2009).
The analogue television is planned to be overcome (the European
Commission has set to the beginning of 2012 the date for the digital
switch-off in all Member States) by the digital terrestrial television
and by the new opportunities supplied by the Internet (Van den Broeck
& Pierson, 2008). Furthermore, other opportunities are offered by
mobile devices which have prompted a call for the switch of frequencies
from TV to mobile telephony. 

The actual television scenario is complex and fragmented, since many
different kinds of TV cohabit: ‘traditional’ analogical TV, digital
terrestrial TV, IPTV, time-shifting technologies such as Personal Video
Recorder and Video on Demand that offer the possibility to record,
sometimes without any advertisement, on supports like DVDs or Hard Drive,
TV programs to be seen afterwards, thus mitigating the rigidity of the
consumption time and of the spatial immobility in the consumption, Mobile
TV and Net TV which is also known both as IPTV and Web TV, which is the
TV on the Internet. These forms of TV are complemented by the satellite
and cable TV.
Television experience is broadening and multiplying, both in quantitative
terms (becoming more available) and in qualitative terms (through a
process of personalization). Television series and programs are now being
spread on physical digital supports such as DVDs and Blue-Ray discs, and
on Internet portals like Apple’s iTunes, where it is possible to access
and download a huge catalogue of television series and movies. Old
distinctions among media contents do not work anymore, when facing the
new media complex media environment: broadcast yourself is the slogan of
the biggest video portal in the world, Youtube, where users can upload
their own videos without any mediation (so-called UGC, User Generated
Content). Television advertising is also reshaping by inspiring to the
Internet banners and by becoming interactive and even more
pervasive.

The present television context is undergoing a strong and multi-faceted
evolution, a diversification and a transformation, where the ‘old’ and
the ‘new’ coexist and entwine, rather than a revolution, as some authors
prefigured in the past (Van Djik, 1999). Keeping in mind that the most
important features of the television experience have been since long time
outlined as the configuration of space, time, services, and audiences,
produced by a negotiation between editorial networks and users (Thompson,
1995; Aroldi & Colombo, 2003), the development of the new television
scenario is better framed in the light of processes such as the rise of
e-actors and of their practices of use, strength of innovation and
counter-power resistance  (Fortunati et al., 2010). E-actors
represent the convergence and the integration of different figures: user,
consumer, buyer, customer, producer, everyday innovator, citizen,
non-user, audience. A consequence of this convergence process is that
audiences too have reconfigured themselves, their habits, expectations
and aspirations, needs and desires, attitudes and behaviour, becoming
networked, augmented and integrated audiences. So, the new forms of
television should be seen as originated from the merging between
technological innovation and new practices of agency and consumption
performed by e-actors. Thus the new television scenario can be seen as a
broad, fragmented and stratified analogue/digital ecosystem made up of
traditional media and technological innovations and products as well as
traditional and new practices and modalities of their use such as
business TV, school and universities TV, street TV, city TV,
neighbourhood TV, etc. In this new television ecosystem, media
convergence (Jenkins, 2006) is only one of the processes, based on the
technology of digitalization and located at the interstice among markets,
institutions, cultural and social forms and ways of
consumption/appropriation.

This call for papers focuses on the complexity of the television
ecosystem, trying to build a comprehensive map and to offer a guide
through this field providing research papers based on a wide array of
television experiences. Topics of particular interest include (but are
not limited to) projects, experiences, practices, innovative uses and
theories about:

analogue television
digital television
cable TV
satellite TV
Mobile TV
Digital Terrestrial Television 
time-shifting technologies 
user-generated contents (on both mainstream platforms like Youtube but
with a particular focus on bottom up experiences)
Web TV and micro TV (street TV, school TV, university TV, videoblog,
videocommunity, etc.)
IpTV 
business TV
interactive advertising
Convergent media consumption
Mobisodes
Webisodes

Deadlines:
Abstract: end of September 2010
Abstract acceptance: end of October 2010
Full papers acceptance: 31 December 2010
 
A selection of papers will be published in an collection with Peter Lang
(Berlin) edited by Alberto Abruzzese, Nello Barile, Julian Gebhardt,
Leopoldina Fortunati.

Contact:
Julian Gebhardt <(julian.gebhardt /at/ uni-erfurt.de)>

References

Abruzzese, A. (1995) Lo splendore della TV.
Origini e destino del linguaggio audiovisivo.  Genova: Costa &
Nolan. 
Aroldi, P. & Colombo, F. (2003) (eds.), Le Età Della TV. Indagine su
Quattro Generazioni di
Spettatori Italiani, Milano: Vita & Pensiero.
Fortunati, L. (2008) Mobile Convergence. In K.Nyiri (ed.) Integration
and Ubiquity. Towards a Philosophy of Telecommunications Convergence.
Wien: Passagen Verlag, pp.221-228.
Fortunati, L., J. Vincent, J. Gebhardt, A. Petrov i , and O. Vershinskaya
(eds.) (2010)  Interacting with Broadband Society. Berlin:
Peter Lang.
Hilmes, M. (2009). Television sound: Why the silence?. Music, Sound, and
the Moving Image
2(2), 153-161.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence
Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York
University Press.
Scaglioni, M., Sfardini, A. (2008) MultiTV. L'esperienza televisiva
nell'età della convergenza
Thompson, J. B. (1995) The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the
Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 
Van den Broeck, W. & Pierson, J. (eds.) (2008). Digital television in
Europe. Brussels: VUBpress.
Van Dijk, J. (1999) The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media.
London: Sage.